The Art of Counterfeiting Currency: CIA, China & Iran Sponsored Fake Money?

Hey, hey, welcome to Edge of Wonder. Is there evidence that countries have sponsored the creation of fake money? Have you ever wondered how counterfeit currency actually works? Well, the U.S. Department of Treasury estimates that $70 to $200 million in counterfeit bills are in circulation at any given time. There's also something called the super dollar, a counterfeit bill so perfect, not even the banks can tell the difference. Could such perfect fakes be made by other governments, foreign powers, or criminal organizations like China, North Korea, or Russia, or even America itself? And if so, why are they making them? Well join us on this Edge of Wonder for a deep dive into the art of faking money. And at the end of the show, don't miss the live Q&A, followed by a meditation slash prayer only on Rise.TV. So we'll see you guys out on the edge of those dollars. And by the way, if you're listening to our Edge of Wonder podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or elsewhere, please leave us a five-star rating and review. And also remember, hit like, subscribe, follow, comment, all, you know, all the above wherever you're watching us, Rumble, Ganjing World, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, so. How are you doing, Rob? Yeah, I'm good. I feel pretty good. Yeah. Looking forward to this episode. I like talking about these like weird, weird kind of, you know, subjects like how money gets made and like all the data really interests me. So this is going to be really fun. Yeah, this is kind of interesting because, you know, I, I didn't really even fully understand. And to be honest, I don't know if anyone has a firm grasp on what's happening in the money world, like, you know, like from everything. But I was kind of shocked to learn a little bit about the history of it. So why don't we kind of, kind of get into the nitty gritty of it. My grandma used to say that all the time, I don't know why I just said that. Well done, Ben. You've become your grandma. Oh, anyway. You should call this show Edge of Geriatrics. Every, every day we get older and every day we start making grandma jokes, you know. I can't believe I just said that. Anyway. All right. Well, Lindsay, you can show some of these examples that are just like just found on Google search, basically, because, yeah, I was like kind of wondering about the history of it. And back in the wild, wild west, like literally the wild, wild west. It was the wild, wild west of printing money. So especially in the eighteen hundreds, basically each bank was in charge of producing their own currency. So you can already see that this would be. So basically there was no standardization. They printed it however they wanted, different colors, different sizes, different domination or nomination or domination, whatever, like all of the above. So as you can see, this would give rise to a lot of issues here. You know, you could just say like, yeah, I got this note from, you know, Park Place Bank down the street. Essentially, it's just monopoly money. And no one would have any idea, you know, whether it's true or not. That's true. Yeah. I mean, look at like look at even the dollar amounts like that was a one dollar bill, which was more like a twenty dollar bill back in the day. But then there was like the three dollar bill, which is really interesting. You know, that's like probably like a 50 back then and 50, man, if you had a 50 dollar bill, you were rolling in the dough back in the day. Yeah. Seriously. I mean, that's probably like five thousand dollars right there. You could do a whole lot with 50 bucks back in the day. That was probably probably more accurately, more around 500, you know, like I don't know. I mean, maybe maybe I don't know. It's a lot. We should look that up. That's interesting. It would be funny if we had all of that. So we could like keep saying how much do you think this cost and this. There's a way to look that up. I'll see how much it was worth. So there was altogether, literally there was eight thousand different kinds of money being used and printed in the United States. So finally, you know, because the counterfeit was so rampant, the government kind of got involved. And and in fact, there was like some estimates that might have been like more counterfeit bills and circulation and you you wouldn't be able to tell the difference, honestly. And so, you know, because, yeah, so finally, the U.S. government stepped in and in 1861, they the the first federal issued paper money was was produced and these were eventually backed by the U.S. government, you know, and whatnot. So then finally, you know, then, of course, the Federal Reserve was formed, as we all know, coming out of 1913, you know, after the Titanic and that whole thing, which is like a whole issue in itself. But then so the Federal Reserve officially took over printing all money at this point, 100 percent control of the supply and everything else. The rest is history. So as we said in the beginning, they estimate between 70 to 200 million dollars in counterfeit bills and circulation in the U.S. So about there's one counterfeit counterfeit bill per every like 4000 genuine bills, I guess you can kind of look at it that way. So Lindsay's looking at well, no, this is so Lindsay, we got to go back to the 1800s. But. Is this the price of what is this? Yeah, I'm starting to type out the prices from 1890. Give me a sec. One pound of steak is 40 bucks. That doesn't make sense. No, that's the wrong year. Wrong year. OK, anyway, we're looking into that. So, you know, what's kind of interesting, this this this all kind of started with me because I was like, OK, you know, because, OK, so there's a lot going on here because now the circulation and then there's the super bill or super dollars, they're called, which is counterfeit bills so perfect that most banks wouldn't be able to tell the difference. And the only way that these can be printed is really by government sources, either like, you know, they have one of the government issued machines or are in touch with the makers of that's. Yeah. So, Lindsay, can we show this clip? So this is so funny. I was just like Ray, I was like working and randomly rush hour two was playing in the background somewhere. And I just heard this part in the in the movie. And so then I went home and found it to record it. So this so this is this is actually me recording this. But play this, Lindsay. I zoom in, so. This is very different from the shot on the ground. One is the one. Our government gave him a US president. But he is. That's right. Now, he's here. OK, we can you can stop. That's interesting. Yeah. So when I heard I just like heard like literally overheard this, I just thought, is this true? Like this is so specific, like it says, like nineteen fifty seven. The CIA gave Iran, you know, this and I was like, well, this is really, really, really interesting. So I kind of started doing this like deep dive. And so these intaglio printing machines is what the US uses to print the US money. The man, can we see a picture of this thing? Like, what does it look like? Is it the size of a warehouse? Like, what does this thing? It's pretty big. And there. So the reason why it's so important, Lindsay, like, yeah, if you can, you can find a photo of this anywhere, I think there's also actually I have a video later on that we can show, too. But yeah, this is essentially. So they print out, you know, in large sheets and then they cut the sheets eventually. But what what happens is that it's first minted in like a forget they have a very specific word for it, but it's almost like like foil and it can get extremely fine detail, which is why, you know, like on the dollar bill, people notice a spider and all these like little, little, little things and all this detail and stuff because they can. Yeah, that's it right there. So that's what it looks like. That's like in before it gets printed. And so they can make these like super fine details in in the in the engraving. And then it gets printed on on the actual thing. And the thing is, most people think it's made of money and it's not. It's like 70 percent cotton. And I can't remember most people think it's made of what money you said or I'm sorry, paper, most people think it's made of paper and it's not. It's mostly made of cotton. So they use like very thin, small strands of cotton. And then that that's what makes the paper what what what looks like. That's why it takes the laundry machine so well, then. Yeah, exactly. It's true. Yeah. So they kind of are. Yeah, they're a little bit more durable than than if it was just made of paper. So, OK, Lindsay, you have kind of are backtracking here. You have a list of retail prices. Let's see, what are we what are we looking at here? 1890, those are dollars. These are cents, cents, cents. OK, that makes five pounds of flour was 14 and a half cents. Look, round steak. Twelve point twelve point three cents. Yeah. Bacon was twelve point five cents. And this only goes up to 2015 when the prices were kind of reasonable. Never mind. 2024, all these would be tripled. Exactly. Wow. Potatoes are more expensive than bacon. Oh, true. Ten pounds. I didn't see that. Coffee, no price. There wasn't any coffee at that point. It's like a cent, half a cent. So in 1860, if you had $50, it would be about equivalent of $1,800 today or 19. Wow. Yeah. 50 bucks was 1,800 bucks. More like 1,900. Really? Yeah. It's like 1888. So more closer to 19. Roughly, give like a rough estimate. I'd be I'd be a rich man. Yeah. So that's like a little strange. I wonder that $50 bill is like, I mean, you could buy a town basically with that $50 bill back then, you know, and houses, houses are so much cheaper, too. But most people built their own houses anyway. It's mostly just for the supplies. So it's insane. You know, when you really think about how much inflation really happened. Well, you know, and that kind of gets back into exactly what happened with inflation, because, you know, as we know, in 1972, I think that's when Nixon, who was president, eliminated the dollar backed by gold. So that changed a lot of things. But but let's see. I found a article from the L.A. Times in from 1992 talking about Iran accused of printing fake U.S. bills, counterfeiting, and those report by House of Republicans. It says billions in bogus money is circulating with serious, serious, serious help. And basically, the report gets into that. There are claims that hundreds, billions of dollars, U.S. hundred dollar bills are in circulation and they're all counterfeit at this time. And this is like in the early 90s. They said, you know, this is where the term the super in the movie, they said super bill. But in real life, it's like the super dollar is what they call it. And it's like so perfect that you can't even see. You can't even tell the difference between the fake ones and the real ones. And so they were trying to figure out how these were being produced. And the article gets into the counterfeit money is being produced at the National Mint and Tehran using U.S. built printing presses and U.S. trained chemists. So somehow they either like, you know, they got anyway. It's like, you know, in that in that movie, it mentions that. So either they were like given this for some favors or somebody, you know, somebody somewhere went in on this. Gave them an Aglio machine. Yeah, exactly. Whether it's like the CIA directly or somebody that was like, you know, you know, I have a question for you, Ben. Yeah. If I was to just say for a minute, like, take a step back. And I was to say, if another country was capable of printing dollars, which countries would you would you suspect? Yeah, right. I mean, in right away, like China comes up, Russia comes up. And, you know, like I wouldn't be thinking about Iran. But the thing is, is like especially during that time, we depended on their oil so much, you know. And then if you think about what happened to Iran, too, you know, like prior to the 70s, it was like in the top five most tourist destination for Americans to go to. And it was very Americanized people living there. I mean, like when you see photos of the 70s, it literally looks like you're looking at California. Yeah. You know, and then and then the there was a massive, massive switch within their leadership. And I can't remember what happened to their to the to the original. Like this is from Iran. And I think it was like this is in the later 70s. And you could like completely see that this looks like California. So like, yeah. And, you know, so many Americans would go here. And then the whole leadership changed and just brought into this, you know, massive regime change. And that's when, you know, massive amount of killings happened during this time. So many people left. A lot of Iranians went to Canada. There's a very large population of Iranians in Canada, actually, through all of this. So, you know, and there's so much controversy and conspiracy and some and some truth rooted in truth about how the CIA worked with that regime changed. You know, there's some evidence to show like, yes, there was, you know, they were doing something. But then like the massive conspiracy is like, did they actually change the power on purpose, you know, to get more control of the oil? And that's been a huge part of this conspiracy. And then, of course, you have the 90s, which was like all about the, you know, the war in Iraq with Bush and all the stuff. But I think like, you know, when I started understanding this, like for one, you know, making money, then all of a sudden you become like a millionaire and it's like, you know, fake money that you're just producing. But it also simultaneously hurts the economy of that country. Yeah, because it, you know, inflation starts going up in Russia. I think it was Russia. They actually tried to do this with the US during, you know, like the Cold War. One of their plans was to produce massive amounts of U.S. currency to try to, you know, do all the inflation. In the end of the day, I don't know if they've really ever went through with it. But but there was also so there's a so I started looking this up online and I found this website called Skeptics Stock Exchange. But before we go into that, why don't we show a trailer and then we'll get back into this? And there was a book that I found that also kind of brings this called The Secret World of Banknote Printing. And it's a very interesting book. So we'll get into this and then come back after a trailer. So did Genghis Khan's ancestors and the Tartarians really discover America? Was Tartaria the real world? And why was it so important to wipe Tartaria off the face of the earth? Take a glimpse into the truth of the past. You were never supposed to know. So did Genghis Khan's ancestors and the Tartarians really discover America? Was Tartaria a global civilization? Forgotten maps. The journals of Marco Polo. Ancient structures. Evidence of advanced technology. Edge of Wonder brings you Tartaria. Art ape. Art human hybrid. Cyborgs and Terminator technology. Already existing. Sentient robots becoming indistinguishable from people. No, it's not the plot of the new Matrix movie. This is our reality. A transhumanist one. How does transcending humanism tie into eugenics, Darwinism and even cloning? Is there any part of our world that transhumanism hasn't touched? Is resistance futile? How can we rage against the machine? I always say that part out loud when it when it comes up, like, how can we rage against the machine? Really good trailer. So, yeah, you guys, the Transhumanism series is on our platform, Rise.TV, and you can support our work by subscribing to Rise.TV and you get a ton of stuff in return. It's not just like a normal Patreon. We give you guys like hundreds of videos that we've painfully created over a long period of time. Tons of stuff that, you know, we did all the legwork. We researched it. We tracked it down. What does it mean? What does it mean for humanity? How can we learn from this? How can we grow as a as a community? It's all on there. And we have an awesome Rise.TV community that we're talking to here on Rise.TV and their awesome group. Super positive. Just awesome group of people that you just love to hang out with. Honestly, everybody looks forward to Tuesdays and Fridays so much. It's so true. So true. Yes. Yes. Somebody in the chat was like, painfully, it was painful. Yeah, actually, creating a script is kind of painful. Sometimes the suffering through all the research and then trying to put it all together. It is a certain type of pain. Yeah, maybe not like painfully may not be a good word. More of just the painstaking, maybe painstakingly. Yeah, that would be a better way of saying, OK, you can use painstaking and I'll use painful. Yeah. A lot of a lot of sleepless nights and hard work. You know, that's kind of where we're going with that, I guess. It's kind of funny. But. All right. Where were we here? We were in the middle of Iran, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So this story began when. So this is what's on this website. And, you know, there are some Russian sources that I've found. But, you know, it's hard to back this up. But I'm going to get into some other facts here. But the story this site says the story began when the United States and Iran were still friends and the Americans were buying oil from the Iranians. At the beginning of the 90s, Americans being tired of carrying dollars to Iran offered them to send them to the US Federal Reserve System officers, along with a printing machine for the Iranians to print for themselves as much dollar as oil is delivered. So in other words, it's like, OK, here, we're just going to print our own money when we when we deliver the oil. And that way it's like, oh, sure. You know, so it's saying the scheme worked until the nuclear program of Iran started to bother the United States. The Americans immediately canceled all their contracts and took back the machines. Then the Iranians began to think what to do with these dollars, which amounted to six trillion. A lot. No, really. And amounts. Yeah. And again, this was a Russian source. This was like, you know, so it's like going to have to take this a little lightly. I couldn't really find a lot of like American sources, except for putting like, you know, people kind of putting one in one together. Even the media had a lot of questions during this time. And the other thing that's really weird is that now with all these counterfeiting bills in in in circulation, that's where are there are there are evidences that U.S. paid Iran in cash for petroleum. Yes, there is evidence for that. It is possible for U.S. to attend F.R.S. officers in petrodollar machines to other country, even to Iran. It is possible to print six trillion dollars outside of the U.S. So it's like they're kind of like fact checking this, like, yes, actually, these things you could potentially do this if you had the means and the ability to do it. You know, it's not as far fetched as it sounds like six trillion dollars. It makes you really wonder like how much legit money, but not actually legit money. I mean, like legit printed, you know, it's not like counterfeit that are just. Well, I guess I mean, from what I understand and, you know, I haven't looked into this maybe as deeply as you have, but that I've I've heard that Russian gangs are like the worst with this. Like they've figured they always figure out the money to a tee and they just batch print hundred dollar bills like crazy. And this is how the world runs. Basically, that's how the world works. So that's it doesn't matter what kind of technology it is. They'll just have super incredibly knowledgeable experts over there that just figured out as quickly as possible and then just mass print bills. And that's how they get all of the money. And that's how they make money. That's how they clean money, the whole thing. Yeah, it makes. I mean, that's probably exactly what's going on. So by this point in the 90s, then they started adding the metal like strip on the special bills, you know? Yeah. And this and then in 1996, they had their first major design change since nineteen twenty nine of the hundred dollar bill. To try to combat. And at this point, that that's when, you know, maybe they I mean, another reason is maybe they changed it because of, you know, all the stuff that was happening. Now, there is a book that came out by Klaus Blender Bender. Not sorry, sorry, Klaus Bender called The Secret World of Banknote Printing. And the CIA has been accused quite a few times of printing and using counterfeit notes, mostly for like clandestine operations, operations and things like that. Now, if you want to read what what he wrote in this book here, Rob, he are you seeing it on the dock here? Yeah. OK, yeah. Bender Bender wrote, quote, The current U.S. administration is blaming the rogue government of North Korea for counterfeiting these bills. Analysis in specialized laboratories show, however, that these phony dollar notes are of such outstanding print quality that Pyongyang. That's the city in North Korea, I think. Yeah. Yeah, that's the hardly right. They can hardly do them on their antiquated printing machines. In addition, all materials used for printing the phony bills are the same as those used for the real dollar bills printed by the Fed's Bureau of Engraving and Printing. These materials are impossible to obtain on the open market. These facts, plus circumstantial evidence, have led led several experts in the field to conclude that the supernotes may well be printed by the CIA itself and used to finance its clandestine operations abroad. That's crazy. It is really crazy. So throughout the late 90s and the 2000s, even when Bush was president, there was a massive thing going on that North Korea is printing all this fake currency. Well, every news organization on the planet dived into this. And New York Times had like a massively long article, probably one of the longest I've seen in a long time talking about this. And they're they're all trying to figure out what's going on. And so during this is during the Bush administration, you know, that's when Bush formally accused North Korea of printing these superdollars then. But the Swiss federal criminal police came forward and said that they doubt that North Korea is capable of producing supernotes, especially to the just because of lack, one, lack of technical expertise and two, that their equipment like that guy mentioned in this book, like it doesn't really seem that this could be logical to do this. The secret. And then what happened was all this media started asking the Secret Service, can you provide more details? And the Secret Service did not provide any concrete evidence to support the allegations against North Korea. They just kind of said it provided no evidence that it was North Korea. Former U.S. officials promoted the allegations have different views on the evidence, with some saying that they never saw enough information to make an independent judgment. And this is all from this article that came out on it. It's 2008, I think. Yeah, this 2008 article. And McClatchy is the is the is the is the site. I'm not even sure what this site is, but this is the article that Lindsay pulled up here. And I found it in an archive thing because I don't even know if the site is still around, but this this went very, very detailed. Well, then Business Insider also had the same thing there. You know, they're kind of talking about the same thing. I don't need to get into all of this. But this is also around like 2008. They were talking about these like high quality 17, 2017. So this is newer. So this is now in South Korea. And again, they're kind of saying that maybe this has something to do with North Korea, and it just gets into basically the same thing. It's a decade later, even more than a decade later. And they're basically saying the same thing. Like we think North Korea is printing these super dollar hundred dollar bills because we found it in South Korea. And it's like that could be from anywhere. Right. So this is the insane part. Rob, this is totally insane. And an airport in Moscow, there was 26 billion dollars that was unclaimed that showed up in like car in like a cargo. Dude, I'm telling you, man, the Russians. Yeah. Yeah. And so a Russian newspaper started reporting on this. And it supposedly it's been unclaimed since 2007. I don't know when the last update happened. There was 200 pallets each containing. Now, this this isn't U.S. dollars, but it contained 100 million euros and it was shipped from an Iranian. So this this kind of also kind of makes their printing U.S. bills and euros. That's what it looks like. Can you pull up? What do you what do you think? Go ahead, Lindsay. They're printing euros, but they've converted it into dollars because this is for an American audience. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So it is it's 20 billion euros, which is like 26 billion U.S. dollars. So there they are printing euros here, you know, which is different for the American dollars. But it kind of it's to me, it's all kind of one in the same, because then it's like, where is this money going to go to? How in the heck did why is 26 billion dollars just shows up in an airport and like no one claims it? So Russian law prevented authorities from seizing the money. Get this, which can only be given to this one guy. It's it was like, hey, we got the shipment of cash for this. This guy who never showed up to claim it. So they think at the time that maybe his son this had something to do with Saddam Hussein, but there's never been a definite answer from this. So this is like all of this gets really, really, really crazy. And then like comes this New York Times massive article. And this this is like this is so incredibly long. We don't really have to get into every ins and outs of this. But it it's a little bit older. It's from the 90s. But it talks about a very specific incident that happened where they found over like three hundred thousand dollars in counterfeit bills that were flawless. And they used the exact same printing, exact same material, the precise carbon, even like everything was perfect as the US dollar. So these were printed on US machine or at least machines like these intaglio machines are called intaglio. That's like this printing aspect. And this happened in 1989. And there was so it started in the Philippines. There was like some some bills that came through in the Philippines. And that's how they started noticing it. So but yeah, they were deaf. They were it was confirmed that they were they were using these intaglio printing presses, which is what the US Mint is made from. The quality was just like superb. In fact, they even said that in some places there was even better printed than the US dollar. That's crazy. So like the US hundred dollar bill. So to give an example of the so if you have a hundred dollar bill and you look at the back, there's a clock on the top of it. Yeah. And I guess like the quality was so perfect that that it was like you could feel the clock with your fingers. Yeah. So but and then the other aspect was is like there had to be government involvement with this because it used as these printings, these printers. So so then this article from the from the New York Times gets into how it does mention Iran. It mentioned a congressman accused of Iran of printing these super notes. And and he he estimated that there are probably billions in circulation at this point, like back in, you know, in these in these 80s. But and it does get into then. And even in the 80s, it's talking about North Korea. And it's kind of like, well, could it be from North Korea? Because they're trying to figure out who really did this. But but yeah, so this is this is all like pretty mind blowing stuff, because I mean, you know, again, if it if it is some kind of government organization from America or something, you know, then it's like, wow, what's really going on? OK, like what are your thoughts about this? What was that movie with Tom Cruise? The one where he's. Oh, yeah. Bringing in money from like drugs. Basically, I was thinking about that movie. Lindsay will find out for us. Oh, my God. We saw it together, actually, when it came out. American made American made American. Yeah, I mean, like, look, since the very, very beginnings of some of these, you know, three letter agencies, there's been like controversy because of stories like this, right? So if they're, you know, funding themselves through the drug trade, why not just at some point go straight to the source and start printing them yourself? Because it's easier to run the clandestine organizations. But it also points out how completely off the rails some of these agencies could be if they're actually doing that, because this has no seemingly no oversight if that's happening, right? That's a completely illegal thing to do. Made legal because of the excuse of clandestine operations, essentially. Right. That's what's happening. So, I mean, yeah, this is like this is the this is wild stuff, because now when you get into this, like what we're talking about here on this episode, you know, you you kind of understand the gangs of the world trying to do this. But when it's like governments trying to do it, it just gets to a whole new level of gang, you know, like we're talking about. I mean, I don't know. Like if you look into, you know, it branches off really quick. Like if you look into the triads or the Yakuza. So the triads are the Chinese gangs. The Yakuza is the Japanese gangs. These gangs, you know, historically are not just separate gangs. They're like they're sort of like pay per play, right? If you have something you want them to do, you can pay them and they'll go do whatever that thing is. And they're outside of government reach or any of that stuff. So it's quite convenient for sometimes them to be used for some of these things. Right. And most of the times they have very like we should have a show maybe on just like the origins of some of these gangs, because it's so weird and interesting, right? Like the Yakuza came originally from rogue samurai that were then called Ronin's because they had no master anymore. And they were basically like, you know, taking, you know, money to go on these operations for whoever it is that had the money to to send them. So they're basically like these are the first ninjas then. So the first ninjas that came from the Ronin basically, you know, who are going around assassinating people and all of this stuff then, you know, turned into the Yakuza. And I'm sure that the triad started in some similar fashion, you know, maybe not the same exactly. But, you know, the reason why we're talking about these guys in general is because it would make sense that these guys were printing the money. Right. But when you're talking about now on a governmental level that this stuff is happening, it becomes like a whole like a way crazier thing. Like now you're you know, this is stuff that, you know, people don't talk about basically, you know? No, they don't. And I and yeah, I mean, we're going to like that's the next part of this really is talking about China and how China plays a massive role into into this. And what's China really doing? But, you know, but before we get there, it's funny because, you know, it's like we went from like, OK, the CIA. Well, you know, we're using a CIA as an example, because I mean that that that's that's that's now rooted in truth. Like they were using drugs to try to fund themselves. So so then it's like like you said, well, why don't we just print money? Well, now, like what's going on now? It's like, why not cryptocurrency? Right. So the CIA director came out and admitted that the CIA is deep into cryptocurrency. So that means what does that even mean? What does that mean? So, I mean, this article from Vice, it starts out there's a long running conspiracy theory among a small number of cryptocurrency enthusiasts that Bitcoin anonymous inventor Sato's shoe. Forget his name. Forget how to say his name. Where is it? I can't see the Nakamori Nakamoto. Oh, she. Yeah, right. Yeah. So there's the conspiracy is that that guy who created Bitcoin is actually part of the CIA or another three later letter agency that they did this to essentially keep funding themselves. You know, that's never been proven. But what the so the director is William Burns, and he said recently that the intelligence agency has a number of different projects focused on cryptocurrency on the go. Well, that could mean they're looking into cryptocurrency or people doing funny things with cryptocurrency, right? That could mean a lot of things. Yeah. He didn't say directly that, hey, we're starting cryptocurrency, you know, coins or, you know, we're behind this or we're behind that. You know, it doesn't really necessarily mean that. But when you kind of like think about all of this stuff and you kind of put two and two together, it's like, well, this is kind of interesting, right? Because I mean, yeah, it makes it does would kind of make sense. Not saying that the CIA created Bitcoin, but just getting involved with with something like that, you know. So, all right. So then, OK, we're going to play or we already did we play two trailers or just one? I can't even remember. Well, we did. We already did. We did two trailers in a row, but we're going to do another trailer. OK, yeah, we'll do that. And then we'll cover China and then we'll go over to rise. Sounds good. All right. Is it a rolling stone in the sky? Is it a hunk a hunk of burning metal? It's definitely not a blackbird singing in the dead of night. It's a UFO. And chances are your favorite rock star has seen it. A rock artist, just crazy. Or is there a reason why so many have claimed to see UFOs from your standard believers to abductees, from lifelong stargazers to superstars turned investigators? UFO encounters seem to follow around these celebrities. Is your favorite rock star on the list? Find out as Edge of Wonder presents UFO Close Encounters Celebrity Edition. Episode one, Rockstar Mind Control. Rockstar Mind Control. Yeah, definitely check that out over on our rise TV platform. You guys, we have content just exclusively for our subscribers. You can come and join us for only twelve ninety nine a month. And also like what Rob said earlier, we have a live chat that we interact with everybody as we're alive. And that's where we do the Q&A. So at the end of every show we have exclusively on RISE TV, we have a Q&A that we answer your questions that you entered in our live chat. So come over and check us out. Yeah, we also have a pretty awesome new coffee subscription that you can get with your RISE TV sub where, you know, it's a higher tier, of course. But every month you get a bag of metaphysical coffee sent to your house every month, and it's excellent coffee. So definitely check that out on RISE TV. When you're signing up, you can elect to get coffee. It's pretty awesome. It is really cool. All right, China, then we'll end here after this. But this so this report just came out within the last few days that China that it's confirmed that China is printing foreign currency as part of a Belt Road Initiative. Of course they are. You imagine like, let's just have China produce all our money. Like what could go wrong? Now, it doesn't look like it's U.S. currency. Oh, Lindsay said this article is from 2018. One of these is OK. I'm sorry. Well, anyway, there there there's some other stuff that we're going to be talking about. That's way. That's also very recent. But I mean, this is still very relevant and people are still talking about this. So, yeah, basically that because China is trying to do this Belt Road Initiative, mostly in the Middle East. It's kind of like the new they called it the new Silk Road, basically, is what they're trying to do. And so Thailand, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, India, Brazil, Poland are some of the countries listed as China producing the money for them. So I I don't even know what to say about that. This is, you know, silent weapons for quiet wars kind of stuff. Pretty much is. Yeah. They said it's cheaper if China does. The cost is less than half of the amount we pay that that we had earlier paid like for themselves when they were producing it for themselves. That's what. So the guy that they interviewed for this, he remained anonymous because he didn't want to like his name to be mentioned. But I guess he was some kind of like official within the Communist Party. And and he was he was doing something. He was in Hong Kong, you know, like working in Hong Kong. And so he was talking about all these things that they were doing. And it's like, this is kind of crazy. But yeah, so the new one that just came out, sorry, I had these two confused. The new one that just came out with the last few days, China just recently dumped fifty three billion dollars in the U.S. U.S. currency. That's crazy. Yeah. And like dumped where? Like, what do you mean they dumped it? They just changed it or exchanged it for something like this or something was the question that I was trying to figure out an answer for for like over a half hour. Right. I could not like no art. I read so many articles on this subject. Not a single one stated where the money actually went to. So I'm like, what the heck is going on? And China, well, it kind of looks like that they might have invested it in gold. That that's one of the things, because China bought over 500 billion dollars in gold in just in the last couple of years. So so then I went to chat GPT because I was like, I give up. What is chat GPT going to tell me? Like, where did this money go to? And it actually said that it was quite complex. And it said China sold 53 billion worth of U.S. Treasury and agency bonds to various buyers, including other countries and financial institutions that were unlisted. They were unnamed. There was no disclosed information. That's why the media didn't talk about it, because not a single one of these institutions or countries were mentioned who they sold it to, who they sold it to. It said it went on to say the specific buyers were not disclosed in the information provided. And it's a complex web of transactions in the global financial market. So this, you know, and the other thing, too, is like, you know, we're in like I was reading the other day that the world is like in trillions of dollars in debt. And I'm like, how how's the whole world in debt? Yeah, you know, and how does that work? How does it work? And, you know, I've I've asked people that are very, very intelligent in the finance world about this questions and like how these things work. And it's so complex, like nobody really has a straight answer. You know, it's all like, well, you borrow from one country, another country borrows from another country. You know, you have goods coming in, you have goods coming out. And, you know, you have been government organizations, private institutions all kind of doing similar things. But then, I mean, essentially, I'm like, well, it probably comes down to BlackRock. You know, if you really want to say it's true, it's like, well, who's really controlling that? Oh, yeah. BlackRock's probably. I mean, they are controlling, you know. Well, I think also there, you know, let's say there's a lot of banks involved. And what's going on is loans are getting taken out from these banks and then you owe the bank. And so if you have enough countries in the world that all owe all of this money to these different entities or different people that are controlling these companies or banks or whatever it is, then you have a situation where the entire world is in debt because they owe all of this money to all of these different banks and, you know, or agencies that that deal with this, right, including maybe BlackRock or other people, like fairly, though. Right. Like, I mean, it's not like they're they're owed something and they're they're getting interest as it's being paid off. Right. And then they're constantly renegotiating this and then getting more and more out of these. And they probably love it. You know. Yeah, no. And this is exactly what happened to Fannie Mac. And I forget the other one in 2008, you know. It's Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Yeah. OK. Sorry. Yeah, those two are confused. And all the other banks that, you know, because what was happening was that they were buying bonds and loans and then reselling those. And then on top of it, they were getting government kickbacks, too. So they were making twice as much on every loan that they would buy, which is why they started buying up all these loans. Right. Eventually, this whole scam and then it also has to do with real real estate was a big, huge factor involved with this. And there was a massive real estate scam, which is the whole movie about the big short is all about the real estate. Yeah, because they figure out like something with the real estate. And that's exactly what happened. So that's like a whole other issue involved with all of this. So there's like massive like the the real estate industry is probably one of the more corrupt sectors of, you know, in America, really. And it's not talked about a whole lot because it's so complex and it's complex on purpose. Anything dealing with money at this point becomes so convoluted, complex and not straightforward because, yeah, I don't think anyone wants it to be that straightforward. You know, it's it'd be too easy to figure out like, oh, you know. Yeah. Why are we all in debt? You know, can't we just like, hmm. Wipe it all out and start all over, which is essentially what kind of a great reset on the surface would imply. But then you have the smart cities, which I don't know if those are good ideas. But but yeah, anyway, so this is all kind of like, you know, I think kind of coming back to a full circle of everything that we're talking about, it just shows that, you know, there's a lot going on and it's complicated and it's complicated on purpose. But, you know, at the end of the day, it's like, what can you do? You know, you just got to live your life and make money and how you are in a honest and open way, I feel like, and just try to be a good person and and stay out of this gang nonsense. Yeah, and I think, you know, eventually I think everything's going to get exposed. And, you know, because like the inflation already, you know, I mean, everything that's happening, inflation in our country, you know, and it's mostly because we've just been printing so much money and that that is like an honest truth. And so, you know, how can you stop inflation? Well, I mean, I think one aspect is like, hopefully, eventually we'll go back to the gold standard. And, you know, that would really change a lot of things and bring and it would keep our currency at like a specific level at that. Yeah. You know, but it would change a lot. It's I don't think it's something that can happen overnight. But, you know, when I when I was really, especially today, when I was really looking at Nixon and how he really ended the gold standard, I was like that. Like, I don't understand how that was really possible, how they were really able to like get. I mean, obviously it wasn't his idea probably to do it. I don't think it was. I think, you know, when it comes to politics, there's usually like a lot of lobbying going on and you got put in that place to do something. And maybe that was one of the things that you you were going to do when you became president or became that senator or whatever it is, and then, you know, it gets weaseled into, you know, the stuff that's going on. Yeah, I think that's exactly it. You know, we had a whole episode to talking about talking about all of that in a specific meeting that happened in the 70s, dealing with the oil and everything else. So, yeah, you know, it's just kind of. But I think hopefully all of this will start turning around eventually. So we and for those of you at home, we're about to leave Rumble, Facebook, Ganjing World, Twitter and else and everywhere else. We're streaming to head over to rise dot TV. You can join rise dot TV for just twelve ninety nine a month and support our work. You'll get to ask us your questions during the live Q&A. And don't forget that your support lets us do these deep dives that bring you the truth that the censors don't want you to hear. And remember to get your bag of metaphysical coffee right here with your new subscription tier that we just put on there. If you want your mornings to be out of this world now, you can go ahead and check out this trailer and then join us over on rise dot TV. We'll be doing that live Q&A and the meditation and prayer. And we'll see you later. John Nostradamus, Confucius, the Mayans, Aztec and Hopi. What's something that the divine, enlightened and ancient all have in common? What did they see and predict during their time here on Earth when they saw visions of the end of days? Were the pictures they were given simply glimpses of the future or warnings of impending doom? Well, since history does repeat itself, let's take a look today and let's find out what predictions, dreams and visions have come true, especially ones made eons ago. And in these days, do we see moral lessons? We all need to pay a little more attention to. Or will we just hastily shrug them off? As a few more amazing coincidences. Don't miss this exhilarating three part series on Edge of Wonder. Prophecies and the end times. Get your questions ready because it's time for our live Q&A session exclusively on rise dot TV.