Swedish Pirate Party founder: Bitcoin has huge political impact on the Middle East

CoinTelegraph sat down with Rick Falkvinge, founder of the Swedish Pirate Party, to discuss decentralization, Bitcoin, privacy and other media outlets needed in the Middle East.

“The traditional media has become a mouthpiece for various corrupt regimes, and independent reporting has been absent for a long time.” — Rick Falkowitz

Rick's entrepreneurial spirit began when he founded his first company at the age of 16. He currently lives in the village of Sollentuna near Stockholm Airport on the outskirts of Sweden, where he currently runs his Falconwing news, an online media outlet that aims to "defend the fundamental values ​​of the Internet."

CoinTelegraph: When did you come up with the idea that “the world needs more privacy”? What made you want to start Pirate Party?

Rick: Actually, I don’t think the world needs more privacy. I care about us living in a society without authoritarianism for generations to come, and maintaining privacy rights, and moving our privacy protection from the virtual world to the digital world.

Have a private conversation without being eavesdropped on; go to a library and read a book without being followed; read a newspaper without the government censoring the articles you read.

This is unthinkable in the virtual world, but it is now possible. That's why I often talk about analog equal rights to explain where I'm coming from.

CT: What is the current situation of the Pirate Party in Sweden? What about the international Pirate Party?

RV: The Pirate Party is currently in the process of reshaping its image. We will see how successful it is – but in any case, the Swedish Pirate Party just needs a source of momentum that can flow internationally, and my goal is to prove to people at conferences that it can be done, which I did already in 2009.

Currently, Iceland's Pirate Party has been the most successful so far, but other countries are doing pretty well (Czech Republic, Germany).

"An alternative to the dollar as the default transaction currency would also mean that the United States would no longer have free access to the wealth of the world, and the United States would collapse under its own weight."

CT: What features do you think Bitcoin needs to be used as a mainstream application?

RV: Availability, availability and more availability. There is a lot of technology in Bitcoin, but it is not enough to just make a secure cold storage for your own use.

Currently Bitcoin is useful as a small transaction currency, you can use a mobile wallet, but if you want to speed up the game, you need to use multi-signature, and then we need more and better tools.

This is not easy to accomplish, but then again, I'm not an expert on feasibility. I'm just saying it's not done yet.

CT: What do you think of Bitcoin’s ten years in the West?

RV: It usually takes a decade for a project like this to get from inception to practical development, which means we should expect someone to break this magic rule - streaming on YouTube, blogging on Wordpress, sharing on Napster - somewhere in the 2019-2020 timeframe.

An interesting observation is that such a service provider may not yet exist.

Europe's economy is in the process of a slow collapse, and so is the dollar.

“Right now, the geopolitical game is going to be about creating the next default trading currency. [...] This will have huge implications for the Middle East, not just in terms of oil trade, but also for the U.S. presence in the region.”

CT: What do you think of the development of Bitcoin in the Middle East over the past decade? What significant political impact do you think Bitcoin will have on the Middle East?

RV: Bitcoin will have a profound and huge political impact in the Middle East and around the world.

Since the 1930s, there has been an increasingly formalized agreement between the United States and Saudi Arabia to trade oil in dollars, making the dollar an important trading currency.

This forces almost all countries to hold a large amount of US dollars in their foreign exchange reserves. This makes the US dollar a default transaction currency: if you want to buy something from China, you need to buy newly issued US dollars from the United States, and then use these US dollars to exchange for what you want to buy from China.

Ending the dollar as the default trading currency would also mean that the United States would no longer have free access to the wealth of the world, and would collapse under its own weight - since August 15, 1971, the money Americans have needed to live has been borrowed.

Right now, the geopolitical game is about creating the next default transaction currency. So Bitcoin may rise to the position of an alternative to the dollar, but it won’t be blessed by governments who would rather see their own currencies become the default.

The only way this could happen is if the government chose to support Bitcoin in order to compete with rival governments’ currencies. They have no chance of achieving this.

In either case, there would be huge implications for the Middle East, not just for oil trade, but also for the U.S. presence in the region.

CT: Are there any Pirate parties in the Middle East? Are there any plans to start one?

RV: At the time of its founding, the concept of the Pirate Party was mainly focused on Europe, basically using the world's largest economy (the EU) as a tool for change. Although we also met many activists in the Middle East, my impression is that creating a political party in the Middle East is more challenging than in Europe.

CT: Can you tell us a little bit about Falconwing News? How is it different from “traditional media”?

RV: Traditional media have become mouthpieces for corrupt regimes at various stages, and there has been no independent reporting for a long time.

CT: Given the existence of such media in the Middle East, would Falconwing News consider accepting relevant reports from people in the region?

RV: We are starting to build in Europe - it is very difficult to build a workflow from North America to southern Europe. Once we learn to combine all the work together to make it profitable, we will continue to expand the team until we have global coverage. It remains to be seen, but I personally hope to build our business in the Middle East and replace traditional media information.

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