Jailed by a Dictator, Fighting Back with Bitcoin | Leopoldo López

28:13Leopoldo Lopez:It had two buildings. One building had 499. And in the other building, it was just me. They take me to the fourth floor. And they put me in a cell. And that was a cell where I spent the next four years of my life in solitary confinement. Holy shit. Four years completely on your own. No interaction apart from with guards? Well, yeah, yeah. No interaction with the guards. I had sporadic interactions with some of the inmates when I went to mass after a big push by my wife for them to allow me that privilege. Then I was allowed to go out and see the sun, but I had to be alone. Then at some point, there were a couple of other prisoners for a couple months that were there with me.

29:04Leopoldo Lopez:But the rest of the time, it was me, myself and I in solitary confinement. Did they keep you on your own to try and break you? Oh, absolutely. That's what solitary confinement is about. But it was also for me not to talk to other prisoners. Well, that's what I was going to say. I wonder if they were worried that you were going to, you know, the rest of the prisoners would be behind you and they were... Well, and they were correct because we actually did that. I was able to organize a riot in the prison. We took control of the prison. So the way I was able to do that was by... When I went to mass, there is a part of the mass when you stand up and you give people peace.

29:45Leopoldo Lopez:And you, you know, You give people, you give them a hug and you say, peace be with you. So what I did is I went into the room, maybe there were like 30, 40 people there, and you just, I scanned the way people looked at me. And when you're in this type of situation, you are in complete alert mode and you really develop a way of understanding your surroundings that allows you to make very quick decisions. So I chose the people that I knew were with me and I would tell them, tell your wife to tell my wife, who are you? And we'll get back to you. So, in a span of like three or four months, when my lawyer came and my wife had the opportunity to visit me, I told both of them that these people were going to approach them and that I needed to know in what part of the prison they were.

30:43Leopoldo Lopez:So, I wanted one person at least in each one of the floors. And then it took a couple of iterations. Then I told them, let's organize a plan to take control of the prison. And one day, and this is the way protests most of the time happen, is that they are sparked by something that happens. One day they tampered with a baby that was going to visit their father that was in prison. And that's like a big no-no. I mean, like they opened the diapers of the kid. They touched the genitals of the baby. And that created complete rage. and we activated the plan to take control of the prison. And for like 12 hours, we had control of the prison.

31:32Leopoldo Lopez:After that, I went into a more severe solitary confinement and I went into a hunger strike. So I did a 28-day hunger strike and actually focused the hunger strike on an issue that I knew we had high probabilities of winning, which was to call for the parliamentary election in 2015. Many people do hunger strikes. The key to have a successful hunger strike is that you have a petition that is probable that can happen in a time span of maximum 30 days. What if you could lower your tax bill and stack Bitcoin at the same time. Well, by mining Bitcoin with Blockware, you can. New tax guidelines from the Big Beautiful Bill allow American miners to write off 100 % of the cost of their mining hardware in a single tax year.

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34:33Leopoldo Lopez:Well, I grew up with a lot of stories about prison because my great-grandfather was a political prisoner Then he went into exile. He died in exile. And his story always shocked me. I couldn't believe, like, growing up listening to the story, that you could go to prison for your thoughts, for your beliefs, for your ideas. I mean, it was completely foreign to me. But I was always interested. And as I was getting closer to calling for the protest, there was a lot of threats against me. And I would be giving press conferences and giving speeches, always calling Maduro a dictator, calling Maduro for the links that he had with the narcos.

35:21Leopoldo Lopez:And I remember journalists and people saying, you know, don't you think that you're putting yourself in danger and they're going to imprison you? So it was very clear to me that that was, that there was a very high probability that I was going to be imprisoned. So I started to prepare myself, started to read about what people did in prison. I read the usual suspects, Mandela, Gandhi, and many others, but especially Venezuelan political prisoners. And all experiences are different, but they all have in common one word, routine. you need to develop your routine so february the 18th 2014 the day my first day in prison of the seven years i spent in prison i dedicated my focus to deciding what my routine was going to be and my routine ended up being something very simple i would do three things every day i would pray every day.

36:27Leopoldo Lopez:I would do something with my mind. I would read, write, draw, try to play imaginary chess or chess or just do something with my head. And I did physical exercise. And if I did those three things every day, I won the day. So my view, my universe was a sell. and my way of knowing that I was winning was doing those three things. If I did those three things and not thinking about what's going to happen next week or the week after or what's going to be the date in which I'm going to be in freedom, I was going to be able to keep strong. And that's what I did. And I was very disciplined in doing that every single day.

37:15But that's crazy mental toughness, because you hear stories of people getting broken by 24 hours in solitary, and you did four years. When you decided to go on hunger strike, why did you think that the Maduro government would care about you being on hunger strike?

37:30Leopoldo Lopez:Well, that's a key. So, I mean, we can do an entire podcast about hunger strikes because I remember reading the hunger strikes of the IRA people that were protesting, I think it was in the 80s, that they died. And that really shocked me. and I started to, I had read a lot about hunger strikes and the way they fail. Most hunger strikes fail. So at the beginning, I wanted to do a hunger strike to ask for the release of all political prisoners. But that was, it was not possible. Too big of an ask. Too big of an ask. But at the time, this is May of 2015, there was an election that had to happen by the end of that year.

38:14Leopoldo Lopez:And according to the Venezuelan constitution, for an election to take place, it had to be called six months in advance. And there was a lot of pressure from internally, all of the political movements, the press internationally for that election to take place. But Maduro was not doing it. So I decided to focus on that. So the hunger strike was not about me. It was not about the political prisoners. It was not about our conditions. It was about the hope for freedom for all of the Venezuelan people. So we became the reference and it became the reference to the point that every day we were on CNN.

38:58Leopoldo Lopez:After I started the hunger strike, more than a hundred other political prisoners started their own hunger strike and more than 150 people that were not in prison also went into a hunger strike. So it was an entire focus. My wife went to speak with the vice president and he told my wife, Jorge Arriaza, he said, tell your husband to quit the hunger strike because we're going to let him die. Would you have gone that far? Well, I was very focused and I was very focused and very strong. That has been the most spiritually intense experience I've had in my entire life. it was like i i don't have a bad memory about that moment for me is one of the experiences of my life that um i remember as the more intense and it's just um you need to be very disciplined the first week is very hard the first the first three days then day seven day eight is very hard but then you go into a plateau.

40:05Leopoldo Lopez:And you need to also do certain things that are counterintuitive. You need to move around. You need to exercise your body. You need to be active. And I had read a bit about it. So I was very focused. And I remember the day that they actually called for the election, the director of the prison and a representative of the attorney general's office, They come to my cell and they say, now you can lift your hunger strike. You won. And I said, I don't believe you. And they showed me, they got their phone, they showed me the news. And I just, I mean, it was such a sweet victory. And they had to come and they would put every day, they would put a very tasty plate of food with a camera right in front of my cell.

41:01Leopoldo Lopez:Every single day. They would desperate you to have some. Oh, yeah, yeah. Because with a camera. And what they were, you know, they were looking is that I would sneak and try to take, you know, a part of that food. So just do, yeah, to disqualify. So why was it so spiritually enlightening? Is it because in that scenario, you have no control over anything, but that's the one thing you can control? Well, that's exactly it, you know. When you're in solitary confinement, you realize that you don't control anything. You don't control what you wear. You don't control what you eat. You don't control when you see the sun.

41:37Leopoldo Lopez:You don't control when you speak to anyone. You don't control anything. But you do control something that is very sacred. You control your mind and you control your heart. So I became very focused in that, in controlling my mind, in controlling my heart. And I actually went to the extreme to start it to. I realized like my heart, not just in the soul sense, but also in the physical sense, they would raid my cell every other week. Like a group, like six, seven hooded armed men would come into my cell, just pressure me. And it was very tough. It was very intense. They would strip, frisk me every single day.

42:24Leopoldo Lopez:So I was always under a lot of pressure. and the first times that this happened to me, I just remember my heart just beating as if it was going to explode. So I realized that I needed to physically control my heart and I came up with this way of training that I would do like 50 burpees and then I would sit and only think about my heart, close my eyes and only think about my heart and my breathing and trying to bring my heart rate as low as possible, as fast as possible. And I had a lot of time. And since I had a lot of time, I did this, you know, every day, several times. And it got to a point where I was really good in self-controlling, like my breathing, my heart rate, and just self-control.

43:18Leopoldo Lopez:It was part of the buildup towards the hunger strike. And then I did the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius. I am Catholic, and this is a meditation by St. Ignatius, who was a warrior that became a man of the church. And he developed this, the father of the Jesuits, developed this way of praying, this way of meditating, that starts by saying the same way you train for your body, you need to train for your soul. So it's incredible. And I did that, and I got to a very, very strong spiritual and mental stage. And I was only focused on that. I mean, this story is already crazy, but it gets even crazier.

44:11So you're four years in solitary confinement. How many times do you see a wife, by the way, in that time period?

44:16Leopoldo Lopez:I would see her sometimes every two months, sometimes every month. How did she handle it? She's a warrior, man. My wife is incredible. My wife, she's a schoolteacher by training. Then she became the national champion of kitesurfing in Venezuela. Then she had a very famous program for extreme sports that was top rating. And she had nothing to do with politics, but she's a very strong woman. And I remember telling her the day I went into prison, I said, now it's on you. You're my voice. And she took that very seriously. She was very committed with my mother as well and the people from my movement.

45:00And she became the voice of the Venezuelan people.

45:03Leopoldo Lopez:She advocated in ways that nobody had ever advocated. She is, I think, maybe the only Venezuelan that met with Biden as vice president and then with Trump at the White House. She met with the Pope. She met with medical Macron. She met with Latin American presidents. She just went around talking about what was happening in Venezuela. And because of her advocacy, it became very clear that Venezuela was no longer a democracy. and at the same time she was a mother at the time I had two kids uh Manuela was four and my son Leo was one and it was very tough for them but she was such an incredible mother that she was able to handle all of the advocacy and to nurture and to explain our kids what was happening and they were able to keep strong.

46:03Leopoldo Lopez:So I'm very proud of everything that she did. Yeah, that's incredible. So four years in solitary, what happened and why did you have then three years, I assume in like general population prison? No, then 2017, we called, I always call for general population prison, by the way. Every time I was sentenced to 14 years, my trial was just as a footnote, my trial was because I was being accused of inciting violence through my speech. And the entire trial was analyzing my speech. And since I never called for violence, there was no proof that I was calling for violence. So the judge concluded that I had the capacity to send subliminal messages to the Venezuelan people.

46:50Leopoldo Lopez:And this is in writing in the sentence. So they sentenced me to 14 years. and that was serving time. But in the year 2017, our movement started another cycle of protest that went along for three months. Three months of massive protest every day in every single city. It was, the country was burning. So they sent me to house arrest to calm the protest down. But while I was in house arrest, I made a video and called for the protest. So they took me back to military prison. It was like going to purgatory and then back to hell. And I spent another period in the military prison. And then they sent me back to house arrest.

47:40Leopoldo Lopez:So I spent in house arrest a year and a half. They made my house a prison, not just for me, but also for my kids and my family, my kids and my wife, every time they went in and out of the house, they had to be frisked. There were like 30 people guarding my house with hoods, machine guns. And it was very intense. And it was even harder for me, house arrest than solitary confinement, because I had the weight of having my family also in prison. So a lot of things happened. 2019 was a very bad year. Maduro Castro stole yet another election. And there was a lot of frustration, but we had won the National Assembly.

48:30Leopoldo Lopez:We had won two thirds of the National Assembly. And we had a political agreement that every party was going to have the presidency of the National Assembly every year. And our turn was 2019. So we came up with this idea that was based on the constitution that stated that if the elected president doesn't show up for the swearing in at the National Assembly, then the president of the National Assembly becomes the interim president until there is a new election. And this was a slim window of the constitution. So we started to work on this and trying to get countries to support us. Ivan Duque was the president of Colombia, and he supported this idea.

49:18Leopoldo Lopez:And then Trump was president at the time, and his administration supported this idea. I remember writing a one-page memo about our approach, and we got support from primarily the U.S. and Colombia. and Juan Guaidó, a member of our party, became interim president and then he was sworn in as the, became the president of the National Assembly and then became interim president. And that was 2019 and it was a moment where there was maximum pressure from the Trump administration. Sanctions started to pile on Maduro. There were a lot of protests in the streets and things started to get very tense. And one day I received a signal message, self-destructive single message that had a general in the background, a general from the military, one of the top ranking generals of Maduro, and a civilian.

50:24Leopoldo Lopez:And then the message disappeared. A week after that, the civilian in that video shows up to my house. at midnight and he says, we want to help. What can we do? And I said, if you really are who you say you are, allow me to talk to some of the military and the police that I've been contacting over these years. And they said, all right. So for three weeks as a prisoner, my house being guarded by 30 guards and armored vehicles, people from the military and the police started to come to my house to legitimately plot against Maduro. So this was the start of a military coup? No, I wouldn't call it a military coup.

51:13Leopoldo Lopez:I would call it a legitimate military uprising. Okay, fair. Because a military coup is the debunking of a legitimate government. Maduro was not legitimate. So this is a legitimate military uprising that we were planning. So for three weeks, I met with the head of the national police, the head of the political police, the military that were in charge of the security of the National Assembly of the Supreme Court, the head of the heat squad of Maduro. very intense conversations. And I remember asking all of them, you know, why are you doing this? And they, some of them were, I think, more patriotic than others, but they were all fearing the impact that sanctions were going to have on them and their families.

52:02Leopoldo Lopez:So we came up with a plan And the plan was to have a popular military uprising that was going to come along with a decision of the Supreme Court that we were also coordinating with. And on April 30th of 2019, I walked out of my house as a prisoner with a convoy of the military and the police waiting for me. My guards were waiting for me outside. I was wearing a jacket with a flag of Venezuela and we all had a blue band around our shoulders. And I remember coming out and all the military just squaring and saying, all right, let's go. So that morning we had this uprising. Things didn't go the way we wanted because the decision of the Supreme Court never took place.

53:01Leopoldo Lopez:and it was very intense. Again, tens of thousands of people in the streets, the military, and the only way out that we had was to seek refuge at embassies. So long story short... Because at this point, you're definitely going to get killed if they get their hands on you. Absolutely. Absolutely. They were already shooting people and it was very clear, but it was a very confusing moment because everybody thought that this was the end of Maduro. So everybody was very, very energized, but I knew that the plan was already failing since the very beginning. So I was in the middle of that, you know, five years before, no, six years before that, I was taken to prison.

53:47Leopoldo Lopez:My last day in the streets was in the middle of a huge protest. Now I came out again in the middle of a huge protest and I had to seek refuge for me and for the military. So I first went to the Chilean embassy and I started to call presidents. In Caracas. In Caracas. Started to call presidents from the region and some of the embassies were already closed. So I remember talking to the president of Panama and he said, I know exactly what you're going through because I was looking for. an embassy that could take the military. And they opened the embassy of Panama to more than 30 military men that were with us in the uprising.

54:31Leopoldo Lopez:And the Chilean embassy had very weak security because the ambassador was not there. And there were already five people from my movement that were staying there. So my wife went there and she said, we can't stay there. And I said, you know, this is where I am. I need to deal with this situation. I need to take care of the military and I need to take care of their security. So she called the Spanish ambassador and asked if we could go there. And he said, yes. So we went to the Spanish embassy and that's where I stayed for the next year and a half. And the Spanish embassy was also under siege. They caught the electricity, they cut the running water, they cut the trash services.

55:16Leopoldo Lopez:And at the embassy, it was only the ambassador, his wife, and the equivalent of the Navy SEALs of the Spanish government. And it was actually an opportunity for me to meet these incredible people. These are, I think, in terms of teamwork, you don't get better than that. You don't get better than a special forces team. And I've always been inclined to training and to combat sports. And we would train every day. We would do combat sports in the morning and CrossFit in the afternoon. So, and in the meantime, between the training sessions, I was working 16 hours a day, like helping Guaidó to run the interim government.

56:00Leopoldo Lopez:And it was very intense until the end of 2020, when things started to get way more difficult. It was already COVID and my mother got very sick. She was going through dialysis. She was waiting for a liver transplant. I had not seen my kids for two years. I had not seen my wife for almost two years. So I decided to escape. And I never wanted to escape, but that's what I had to do. Because essentially, when you're in the Spanish embassy, you're just in another prison. Like, I'm sure it's much nicer, but you're still trapped. Oh, absolutely. So how did you even plan to get out? Because again, I imagine there were people, if they heard you'd escaped from the embassy, they're going to be hunting you down on the street.

56:46Leopoldo Lopez:Oh, absolutely. So I called a friend of mine, with whom we've done different special operations before, like many extractions. And this is a guy that was not even a member of the movement. He was a business person, but a good friend of mine. And he, for years, had been doing all of these things with me. And he knew that one day I was going to call him. So I called him up and I said, hey, man, what's up? What's up? Okay, you know, you know. And he knew. And he started to plan. And a month after, I called him. We decided on the date and he was ready. So I left the embassy in the trunk of the car.

57:30Leopoldo Lopez:of the ambassador and went through the checkpoints because of the Vienna Convention. They couldn't frisk and open the car of the ambassador. And several blocks away, I transferred to another car. From there, we went to the basement of an office building. And in that basement, I saw a group of six of my friends and two cars that were of the electricity company of Venezuela. And my friend started, you know, after we spoke and we hugged each other and he said, all right, this is the plan. We are an electricity commission. These are your IDs. These are your uniforms. This is what we're going to do.

58:11Leopoldo Lopez:This is where we're going to go. And he had planned every detail, like even who was going to sit where, how we were going to react if we were detained. And we went through for like 16 hours, we went through like 20 checkpoints, not a problem. And we got to the border between Venezuela and Colombia at the Meta River. On the other side, it was terrorist territory of the FARC and the LN. These are terrorist organizations. So we had called the president of Colombia to support. So there was Secret Service from Colombia waiting for me on the other side. So Colombia and Maduro aren't like - At the time, they were at odds.

58:56Yeah. Okay.

58:56Leopoldo Lopez:At the time. Now, the new president of Colombia is an ally of Maduro. So we went through the last checkpoint. There was nobody there. It's like, all right, what do we do? So we cross, we go in the boat, and about to start crossing the river. And then like eight military, they storm at us with the machine guns and they say, hey, you know, who are you? And they called us out and they started to frisk all of us. This is the end of 2020, COVID, no vaccines yet. So we all had face masks. They started to ask us, who are you? There are two things you always need to do if you're doing a cover-up operation.

59:47Leopoldo Lopez:Status of being and status of action, which means why are you here and who are you? And you can go down a rabbit hole with each of those questions. Like, who are you? It's not just your name and your ID. Who are you is, you know, where you live. Who are your parents? Where did you go to school? You know, on, on, on, on, on. And why are you here is, you know, you're an electricity commission. So, you know, you can go down that rabbit hole. My role was to be very sick. So immediately I started to cough. I started to, you know, I would shrug my shoulders and I would sit down. I would say, you know, I feel very sick.

1:00:24Leopoldo Lopez:And remember, this is before vaccine. Everybody was scared. So I was the only one that they didn't ask to take the face mask out. so they asked my friend um you know who are you they frisked him and they they found some cash and they you know the lieutenant tells him so you you're not an electricity commission who are you and my friend said all right man i want to tell you the real story i have a case against me in caracas and i have to leave to colombia uh and he says but it's no political no no no no no it's financial. It's a private case. All right, I'm going to call the general that is supervising this region.

1:01:11Leopoldo Lopez:And he said, wait, wait, don't call him yet. Think about this. If you call the general, he's going to take all of that cash and you're not going to get a single dollar of that juicy amount of dollars that you have in your hands. He thought about it for like 30 seconds. And then he said, all right, get the fuck out of here. Oh, my God. And I imagine you're panicking while you're... Well, I was sitting with another friend and I told him, I said, listen, I'm not going back to prison. I'm not going to give this Christmas present to Maduro. I'm not going back. If this is going to get tougher, I'm telling you, I'm going to run to the river and I'm just going to start swimming.

1:01:56Leopoldo Lopez:I took my boots out. I had cowboy boots on. And I was just ready to do that. So, you know, when my friend comes out, we started running. And, you know, we got on the boat. We crossed the river. And then I boarded a military plane from the Colombian government. Went to Bogota. There I met the U.S. ambassador. Some Colombian officials. I called the president. And they said, you need to leave immediately. They put me in another plane. and they sent me to the US with nothing. I had no idea. I had nothing. So I landed and the next day I boarded a plane, again, with no passport, with no papers, nothing, to Madrid where my family was.

1:02:43And so what was it like when you landed in Madrid and you were free really for the first time in, I don't know, close to a decade?

1:02:49Leopoldo Lopez:Well, it was bittersweet. It was bittersweet. It was sweet because I was with my family. It was a very happy moment. because I could see my kids, my wife. But it was bitter because I felt frustrated that I had to leave the country. I never wanted to do that. And to be very honest, exile, at the beginning, it was tougher than, like, psychologically and emotionally, was tougher than prison and house arrest because I felt defeated. I felt frustrated. and I still had no clarity of what I was going to do in order to continue my fight for freedom. And so that was in 2020. At the end of 2020, November 2020.

1:03:38So between then and the election that was a little over a year ago, is that right? Yeah. What did you do? Well, I continued to be very involved with Venezuela,

1:03:47Leopoldo Lopez:with our movement. But then I had the opportunity to go to a Oslo Freedom Forum that took place in Miami that year, 2021. And I met Masih Alinejat, who you met yesterday. And I met Garry Kasparov. And I met many other activists. And it became very clear to me and to us that what I was going through in Venezuela was the same thing that they were going through in their countries. So my speech was that we need to create an alliance of freedom fighters. So we decided to create this movement alongside with Masih Ali Najjar and Garika Spadov. And that's how the idea of the World Liberty Congress started.

1:04:30Leopoldo Lopez:The World Liberty Congress has become the largest global alliance of democracy defenders and freedom fighters. And today we have representatives from more than 60 countries. And these are people that we are very different in any way you look at us. Skin color, religion, language, history. But when it comes to talk about our fight for freedom, it's the same story. You met Tanatron, who is the leader of the opposition movement in Thailand. When I talked to him, it's as if we had always been in the same movement. His movement is the same. His life story is very similar to mine. He always says, but I still haven't been to prison, but everything else is the same.

1:05:18Leopoldo Lopez:The color of his movement is orange. The color of my movement is orange. The way we, the challenges we have to organize movements is the same. So it became a natural alliance for us. And for me, it's been an incredible growing experience just to meet people all over the world to understand. understand and I truly believe in this idea now. Before, I theoretically believed in this idea, but now I fundamentally believe that freedom and human rights has no borders. And if you truly believe in freedom, you cannot be selective about the countries that are entitled to democracy and freedom. And if you believe in freedom, you need to believe in democracy because there is no way a citizen can be free in a system that is not a democracy.

1:06:08Leopoldo Lopez:There is just no way. So I've dedicated my life and most of my efforts over the past years splitting between focusing in Venezuela and building the World Liberty Congress. And your political party was orange, and now with World Liberty Congress, you're using Bitcoin. Yep. So maybe it's worth getting into that. This is a Bitcoin show. We're here at a Bitcoin event. How are you using it? Well, I started in 2020 when we were going through COVID. We had the interim government and the U.S. government had seized, frozen accounts of the Maduro regime. And there was one account that we were able to use those funds.

1:06:59Leopoldo Lopez:But it required an approval of the Treasury and the OFAC. And it was COVID, and we wanted to do something for the medical doctors and nurses that were at the front lines. At the time, a nurse was earning$3 per month. A medical doctor was earning$5 per month. And it was very clear that this was a recipe for disaster in terms of just dealing with the COVID crisis. So we came up with this idea. Why don't we give cash transfers? All right, that's a great idea. So how do we do it? We can't use the banking system. I've been a victim of financial apartheid since 2008. I've not been able to have an account in Venezuela.

1:07:43Leopoldo Lopez:My movement never had an account in Venezuela. It's impossible to use the banking system. And to get resources, the only way we could do it was by using, at the time, what we used was stablecoin. So we put together this program using USDC and we were able to do it in a way that was so beautifully put together that we got the OFAC license and it was the first ever OFAC license that mentioned crypto and stablecoins. And this is back in 2020. the program was rolled out and we were able to support 80 ,000, almost 80 ,000 medical doctors and nurses. That's incredible. And it was very public because we were making, you know, we were talking about it and the regime tried to shut it down in all sorts of ways.

1:08:43Leopoldo Lopez:They couldn't. So, uh, it was very clear to me that this was a very powerful tool. Then I came out and I met, uh, Alex Glastin, and I met this community and we started to do the same, but with Bitcoin. And we, of course, understood the benefits of Bitcoin. And to date, we still support 20 ,000 activists monthly of different political parties and different sectors of civil society with this tool that it's been in place since 2020. Last year, there was an election in Venezuela And we were able to use Bitcoin to support the people that were in the front lines, guarding the vote in each one of the 14 ,000, 16 ,000 voting centers.

1:09:34And that election was clearly not won by Maduro, but he kept power. So do you want to explain what happened there?

1:09:42Leopoldo Lopez:Well, what happened there is that we won the election. Maduro, I think he miscalculated. He disqualified the candidate that had won the primary the same way I was disqualified years before. And we were able to register a candidate that was completely unknown. Was this Edmundo? Edmundo Gonzalez. He was 75 years old at the time. A completely unknown diplomat. Very soft-spoken person. By no means the charismatic leader that will go and rally the people. and we were able to register him. And everybody rallied behind him. And he was able to win the election and we were able to prove that the election was won because we had people in each one of the voting centers that were collecting the voting tallies and it became clear with proof, The Carter Center, the UN, and many other independent organizations did the audit and actually concluded that we won the election with 70 % of the vote.

1:10:57Leopoldo Lopez:What happened afterwards is what happens in autocratic countries. Maduro decided not to recognize the election, and he did do another coup. He announced bogus results, the people came out to the streets. He took the military, started to repress the people. And for the past year, year and a half, it's been a completely new territory in terms of the way we do politics. Before, we were semi-clandestine. Now, we are fully clandestine. thousands of new political prisoners, people being tortured, entire families being disappeared. And it's become a very suffocating situation for the Venezuelan people.

1:11:47So it's obviously amazing that you can pay these people who want to protest in Bitcoin. And like you say, you just can't do that with the normal financial rails. But if every time, you know, the parties that you're getting behind win an election, Maduro just says no, then what's the hope? Like, what can change?

1:12:08Leopoldo Lopez:Well, at this moment, I don't know if you've been following the news, but the US government has deployed the US Navy to the South Caribbean. And it's been pressuring Maduro. And I think that the Trump administration and Rubio that is leading this, they are on spot by framing the problem of Venezuela, not just as a problem of an autocrat that stole an election, not just as a problem of massive human rights abuses, not just as a problem of a humanitarian crisis that has led to 10 million Venezuelans, a third of the population to leave our country. But they have framed the problem at the root cause, very rightly so, as a law enforcement criminal issue.

1:13:10Leopoldo Lopez:Understanding that Maduro is the head of a criminal organization. Maduro has been indicted by the U.S. government in 2020 as the head of a drug cartel. And as I told you before, we know this very well in Venezuela. I was sentenced to 14 years of imprisonment for calling Maduro anarcho. So this is not a made-up story. We know this in Venezuela. We know that we are no longer an oil economy. Venezuela today is a criminal economy that has different pillars, contraband, the extraction of gold, the corrupt and dark sale of oil, and cocaine. And in all of those areas of that criminal economy, Maduro has deployed the military and the business enablers that have created a web of interest that allow that criminal structure to grow and to go beyond borders, not just to the Latin American region, but to the United States.

1:14:15Leopoldo Lopez:When Trump says that cocaine is going from Venezuela to the United States, he's completely right. But it's not just the United States. It's also crossing the Atlantic and going to Europe. So I think that this pressure moment against Maduro as the head of a criminal organization is a window of opportunity that can spark the moment of a massive popular reaction that hope happens soon that will allow us to finally transition to democracy. It's not an easy path to go through. It's not a straight line, but it's where we are now. And we are very hopeful. So are you more hopeful now than you were a few years ago?

1:15:03Leopoldo Lopez:Well, I would say that we've been in baseball terms. We've been in third base many times. It's been hard to go to the home plate. So we are in third base again. And yes, I am hopeful. Last year, when we had the election, I was hopeful. In 2014, when we were in the streets, I was hopeful. So I am an eternal optimist. And I think that's a necessary characteristic in this business of fighting against dictators. I mean, you cannot be a cynic. Well, you just wouldn't do it. Yeah, you just won't do it. You cannot be a cynic and you cannot be completely rational. You cannot be rational about your motivation.

1:15:43Leopoldo Lopez:You need to be rational about your strategic approach. But, you know, it's what we all are now in Venezuela. We're hopeful. I've seen the videos of, like, the drug boats being blown up coming out of Venezuela, and I've seen Trump ramping up the pressure. And Maduro must be feeling insane pressure right now. What I can't figure out is he can't step down because he's going to go to The Hague, or he's going to get killed somewhere. So is the only real outcome of this, someone needs to kill Maduro? Well, Maduro could take the decision of negotiate. That's always an open position that he has. But not negotiate for him to stay in different conditions.

1:16:24Leopoldo Lopez:For him to negotiate, to leave power, and to be part of at least having some say of how the transition could happen, as it happened in Chile, as it happened in South Africa, as it happened in many transitions where the incumbent autocratic regime had a lot to say in what the transition was going to look like. But that's one alternative. The other alternative is that nothing happens. I hope that that's not the scenario. And the other one is that there is more pressure that will just suffocate Maduro somewhere or another. Yeah. And a military uprising is probably a likely one as well in that. Well, I think a military uprising, it's something that could happen, but it won't happen in a void.

1:17:14Leopoldo Lopez:I mean, it won't happen without an action. The military uprising could be a reaction to what's happening now and to what I think is going to happen in the upcoming weeks that we are going to see strikes inland. So far, we have seen strikes against boats that are carrying cocaine at sea. I think this is going to move to targeted strikes inland that could, you know, there is a wide range of possibilities of what those strikes could look like. I hope, and this is what we need to work on, is that one of those strikes, one of those actions leads to an internal reaction, which is the way and the path to a transition.

1:18:03Leopoldo Lopez:And that reaction is people, is people power, is people in the streets. So let's say all this happens. I hope it does. I hope that the Venezuelans manage to get their country back. But what did he say? A third of the population have left over the past few decades. No, in the past decade. In the past decade. So just to put that into context, because I mean, that's very easily said. 10 million people. Okay, what does that mean? That means a third of a population. So the US has, what, 300 million people? Imagine 100 million US citizens living in 10 years. It's crazy. A third of a population. and the that that third of a population is mostly young people professionals people who are looking for a future for opportunities because they cannot find those opportunities in venezuela and this is where it gets tricky in terms of like if all this happens the venezuelan people get the country back how do you rebuild because you've lost so many people and the people that are leaving are probably the middle class of society, I would guess.

1:19:09Leopoldo Lopez:No, no, no, no, no. Is that not true? No, no, everybody has. I mean, I don't think that today there is a family in Venezuela, middle class or the poor classes, that they don't have someone from that family that has not left Venezuela. So this isn't like they're leaving to go to a university in the United States. No, no, no, no. They're walking out the country going to... There's just... They are walking. So let me tell you a story. I was in Costa Rica two years ago, and I see in the roads a group of seven people walking. One of them had the Venezuelan flag, so I stopped the car, started talking to him.

1:19:46This was in January, and I asked him, so when did you leave?

1:19:51Leopoldo Lopez:He said, after Christmas, I left. And where are you going? And he said, I want to go to Canada. I said, to Canada, man, how are you going to cross the border? and he said, you know, I'd rather have the uncertainty of how I am going to cross the border than the certainty of staying in Venezuela and not being able to feed my kids. And that's, I think that story, that mentality is what motivates millions of people that have left. Walking. Imagine walking from Venezuela to Mexico, to the US. Walking. Crazy. But so how do you rebuild? If so many people have left, if the country's been stripped of all of its resources by this dictatorship, how do you rebuild?

1:20:36Leopoldo Lopez:Well, the first, I think, that we need to understand is that we will be rebuilding at a moment where everything has been destroyed. So all of the rebuilding process, it's going to revert the current tendency of continuous and prolonged destruction. So just reversing the tendency is going to be a big win. I think that there is going to be a main challenge, which will be to have a stable transition. So the security aspect of it is going to be very important. But in my view, the quick win that will lead to more stability will come from addressing the purchase capacity of the population. And if we are able to show that we can stabilize the economy and start the economy to grow and people start to see the benefits of living in a non-inflationary economy, in having wages that can actually buy what they need, I think that that is going to be the beginning of a reconstruction that will have to touch everything.

1:21:50Leopoldo Lopez:Education, healthcare, infrastructure, energy, oil, you name it. Everything will have to be reconstructed. But the priority, I think, in the first months and year, will be the political stabilization, security, and the economic stability. It's a big task. It's huge, but it's one we're dreaming for. Absolutely. It's a far better future than... Oh, absolutely. And we all know that. And, you know, I think that the fact that 10 million Venezuelans have left our country, it's also a huge potential. We heard in the conference a couple of Venezuelans speak about what they're doing. So there are, in the Bitcoin community, there are tons of Venezuelans that are doing incredible things.

1:22:36Leopoldo Lopez:And this is happening in all industries, in all industries. I don't think everybody will go back physically, but I think most people, especially people that have been successful in whatever area, they will figure out a way to be part of the reconstruction of Venezuela with ideas, with capital, with connections. And that's, I think, one of the biggest assets that we will have for the reconstruction of Venezuela. Well, Mauricio was saying it on stage yesterday. He was saying that he's obviously left Venezuela. He left quite a long time ago now, but he's still hiring people in Venezuela. He said there's some of his best workers there.

1:23:15He's still trying to support the country, and I think there'll be a lot of people doing that. Yep. So in terms, this almost feels like a bit of a trivial thing when this is such like a human story, but you have talked about the opportunities that Bitcoin has in Venezuela. You have a ton of power. Like, do you think things like Bitcoin mining will play a part in this rebuild?

1:23:36Leopoldo Lopez:Yeah, I'm convinced. So let me give you, so I think Bitcoin has a lot of potential in two phases. the current phase, which is the resistance phase, that as I said before, I hope that soon we will be walking towards transition. But we need to prepare for all scenarios. So how can Bitcoin support the resistance movement? And we're working in evolving what we have been doing, as I said before, supporting activists, supporting different sectors of society through Bitcoin and stablecoin. And we are working on this idea of decentralized resistance using not just Bitcoin, but also Noster. I think Noster has a huge potential because when Noster came out, I had a conversation with Jack Dorsey two years ago, and he was very pumped about Noster.

1:24:31Leopoldo Lopez:And I listened to him and said, well, it sounds cool, but I don't see the use case. But a year ago, after Maduro stole the election, X was banned in Venezuela and WhatsApp was criminalized in Venezuela. So something like NOSTER is very useful now. So we are working to onboard activists on NOSTER in a completely private way, in a completely anonymous way, and in a way that we can support them directly through microsupports and SAPs. and many people require support to do things or even for their personal emergencies that are less than$100. To get a grant from an organization, not even$100, let's say$5 ,000.

1:25:26Leopoldo Lopez:It's not possible. So there are many things that could happen in terms of supporting people by zapping just small amounts of money. So we are working on this idea of decentralized, micro-philanthropy through NOSTER. And what we want to do is to onboard hundreds and hopefully thousands of activists that will be anonymous. We will be able to verify them. We will be able to take the content from NOSTER, export it to other social media through our own channels, and to link those activists and whatever their activities are to people in the Bitcoin community that could engage in this micro-philanthropy.

1:26:13So that's something we're doing now with Bitcoin for the resistance. So when we were in Bali, you were telling me about this, and I think it's a really cool idea because you almost want to incentivize people to go out and protest and like take pictures on the street. And if I saw that sort of thing on Nasta, I'm zapping that all day long. And the idea of them getting, you know,$50 to$100, easy. They're going to get that every single time. And like, if that little bit of support changes the direction of a country, like it's insane.

1:26:36Leopoldo Lopez:I think Nosser is very cool for different reasons. You know, it's decentralized. You don't have a company that is owning the social media. But I think something that is really transformative is the saps. 100%. I mean, the saps can become something so transformational. I mean, think about this. People get obsessed with likes. And likes is just a number with a hand, with a heart. You know, a SAP is something that can materialize in money. It could be small amounts of money for the people giving, but it can be a significant amount of money for the people receiving. And I think this can create also a way of linking people out in democratic and free countries with people who are fighting in the front lines.

1:27:28Leopoldo Lopez:And I think this type of globalization is not the state to state, company to company globalization, but this is something much more powerful. This is the citizen to citizen globalization. And if we make that about freedom, if we make that about a common hope that the world should be free, it could be very, very strong. I love it, man. So you have a lot of hope, Venezuela. You think things will get better. I obviously hope you're absolutely right. But the other part, just to not to dump this idea. So one, Bitcoin for resistance. But then let's think about the scenario of Venezuela transitioning to democracy.

1:28:16Leopoldo Lopez:Bitcoin can play a huge role. And let me give you some examples. Venezuela is the second largest hydroelectricity producing country in South America. We are currently wasting 55 % of the energy that is being produced for two reasons. Because of the destruction of the transmission infrastructure and for the collapse of the industrial network in Venezuela. That's not going to change anytime soon. But the energy is being produced every day. The water is going through the dam. It's going through the turbines. And that 55 % of wasted energy is happening as we speak. So it's a no-brainer to immediately reach out to the private sector and to build the largest Bitcoin mining in South America and maybe in the world in the Goody Dam.

1:29:12Leopoldo Lopez:And then we can do the same with the natural gas flaring. Venezuela is the country that flares the most amount of natural gas in its process of producing oil. Let me just explain this. When you have an oil field, most of the time the oil coexists with natural gas. So if you don't have the capacity to extract the natural gas and capture it, to use it, that natural gas, which is highly toxic, goes into the atmosphere. And that happens at a huge rate as we speak. So hydroelectricity and natural gas flaring are two wasted energy that are happening today in Venezuela that we can link to Bitcoin mining immediately.

1:30:04Leopoldo Lopez:Then what do we do with the Bitcoin? Well, I truly believe that one of the ways in which Bitcoin can be adopted at a much faster rate is if people start to be paid in Bitcoin. Because if you think about it, I mean, the people who listen to this podcast are Bitcoiners, mostly. Yeah. And I am sure that everybody listening to me, they have their own personal story of how they became a Bitcoiner. But it's mostly a kind of a process of being convinced that this is something. And then you were able to buy your Bitcoin as a store of value. But if you are paid in Bitcoin, then you start to see that Bitcoin is also a means of saving.

1:30:55Leopoldo Lopez:Nobody saves a penny in countries that are inflationary. And Venezuela went through one of the toughest hyperinflation periods in the world only a couple of years ago. And I think that that Bitcoin being produced can be part of a pilot program of asking part of the civil servants in Venezuela if they would voluntarily would like to be paid in Bitcoin. So maybe 10%, 5 % of the people say at the beginning, yeah, I would like to do that. I'm sure that after six months, 50 % of the people would be wanting to be paid in Bitcoin. Maybe that won't be possible, but I think that that will create a very fast adoption rate, and it will create an ecosystem where Bitcoin is familiar to everybody.

1:31:49Leopoldo Lopez:Then another thing that can be done that it's a no-brainer, super fast, making Bitcoin attractive for Bitcoiners worldwide. No capital gains. Make it legally safe for Bitcoiners to move to Venezuela, to move their businesses to Venezuela, and to be a reference for the Bitcoin community. So I think that Venezuela is positioned as one of the few countries that can have the fastest adoption of Bitcoin if we do it in the right way. And these are just three things of many that we can do. Yeah, as bad as it has all been in Venezuela, if you do manage to get rid of Maduro and rebuild, you have an opportunity to just run this thing at light speed and get way ahead of almost every country in the world.

1:32:41Well, that's what we hope. It's very cool. So what do you want people to do in terms of finding out more about this World Liberty Congress that you're running, more about you, more about the projects you're working with?

1:32:54Leopoldo Lopez:Well, I would invite people to go into our website, worldlibertycongress.org. And next month in November, we're going to have a huge event. So last year, we were invited to give a keynote speech at the 35th anniversary of the fall of the wall in Berlin. And basically what Masi and I said was that you guys are celebrating this as something of the past, but we want to talk to you about the walls of the present in Iran, in Venezuela, and in more than 80 countries in the world. So the mayor said, I really like what you said. What can we do? So we said, well, in the same way that Paris has the Paris Fashion Week, why don't we organize the Berlin Freedom Week?

1:33:40Leopoldo Lopez:He liked the idea. So that's going to happen next month in Berlin. We're going to have our General Assembly at the Berlin City Parliament. And we're organizing more than 80 events, small, large, cultural, technical, around the city of Berlin, which is a very cool city. I think it's no better city in the world to do something like this. It's a very cypherpunk type of city. It has a complete attitude for this rebellious attitude to it. And I think for those people who are interested, you know, go into our website, look at the programming, reach out to us and help us in any way and be part of this community.

1:34:23Leopoldo Lopez:is a community with purpose, very cool people, very motivated people, people with incredible stories, and people who want to change the world. We want to change the world. And we wake up every single day thinking of what are we going to do today to change the world. Let's go, Leo. I love that. I assume if Venezuela gets to the point where you have free, fair elections, democracy, everything changes, would you go back and try and do something politically? Or is that behind you No, no, of course I will go back. I will go back immediately. But would you want to run to be the leader of the country?

1:34:57Maybe.

1:34:57Leopoldo Lopez:You know, we'll see what happens. Now we have an elected president. Yeah. So he will lead the transition, and I will be fully backing him in the process of the transition. I first want to go back to my country. I want to go around my country, and I want to do what I like to do the most, which is to build a movement. And I want to go around the country, just organize young people, organize community leaders, and again, strengthen a movement of leaders. That's my real passion. If that leads me to the opportunity of running for office again, yeah, I, of course, will open that door when it comes. But my passion is seeing Venezuela free and to build a very strong movement that will keep freedom alive because the fight won't be over when Maduro is out.

1:35:54Leopoldo Lopez:The fight will continue in a different terrain with different challenges, but we will need to have strong movements, strong committed leaders, and a strong passion for freedom, democracy, and human rights. I love it, man. It's very cool. I hope we see this world sooner rather than later. I hope so too. I hope that next time we do an interview, Venezuela as a free country again. Well, I hope in a couple of weeks we can do it. Hey, as soon as it happens, we're doing it again. But yeah, thank you so much, man. It's been cool to get to know you. And your story is absolutely wild. Thank you very much.

1:36:26This has been great. And I will probably see you in the sea next time I see you. Absolutely. Thanks, man.

1:36:45Thank you.