Introduction
During the week from 20-22 May 2025, the Qatar Economic Forum powered by Bloomberg, took place for its annual event. The event is Middle East’s leading conference about global business and investment and convenes global financial, business and regulatory leaders to provide new and unique perspectives on economy, business, and Capitalism. For its 2025 annual event it featured notable speakers included Michael Bloomberg Founder of Bloomberg, Tan Su Shan CEO and Director of DBS Bank Group, Ted Leonsis Founder, Chairman, Managing Partner & CEO of Monumental Sports & Entertainment, Chia Der Jiun Managing Director of Monetary Authority of Singapore but also Yanis Varoufakis Economist and Politician.
No I didn't travel to Qatar to attend the Qatar Economic Forum although that would have been an intriguing experience. However during my usual youtube browsing I came across with Bloomberg Live Youtube Channel hosting an interview of Yanis Varoufakis who discussed global economics, business and politics with Bloomberg’s renowned journalist Mishal Husain at the 2025 Qatar Economic Forum main stage. And I believe that is is important to provide an overview of this conversation as it touches sensitive matters of global economy including the application of the Blockchain technology on the economy through the various versions of cryptocurrency.
Who is Yanis Varoufakis
For those who don't follow world economy and politics, Yanis Varoufakis is a Greek economist, academic, and politician known for his outspoken views on economic policy and global finance. He served as Greece’s Minister of Finance in 2015 during a critical phase of the Greek Financial Crisis representing the "leftist" government in tense negotiations with the European Central Bank, Eurozone Council and the International Monetary Fund. A critic of austerity measures, Varoufakis advocates for democratic reform of the eurozone and global capitalism. He is also a prolific author of popular econmic books such as "The Global Minotaur" and co-founder of the political movement "Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25)". In the past, he had been related with the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto as they both share the same vision for a free global market without the intervention of monetary middlemen.
In Conversation with Yanis Varoufakis
During his interview session with Bloomberg’s renowned journalist Mishal Husain, Varoufakis shared his opinion about global economy business and politics.
Initially, Mishal Husain presented his book "Techno Feudalism: What killed Capitalism" and tried to make a discussion about Varoufakis past as a Minister of Finance for the "leftist" government in Greece back in 2015. Yet Varoufakis decided to avoid speaking about the past and his political career as a Minister of Finance of Greece during the Greek financial Crisis highlighting for one more time that the Greek Financial Crisis was actually (and still is) a European Financial Crisis after the German and French Banks realised in 2009 a huge financial hole in their budget and decided to shift their debt to the taxpayers of the European South and Ireland who had the weakest economies in the Eurozone.
He then presented an overview of his book defending his ideas about Techno feudalism and how BigTech companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, Meta or Google have established a new technoeconomic system where the tech "whales" monopolise the internet market by concentrating huge amount of Capital, charging high commission to its publishers for hosting their products and services in their platforms and even more significantly they manipulate humanity through them as massive overconsumption hubs.
An interesting example that he presented was the fact that the continuous posting of users in social media is actually "free labor" that adds value to the social media platforms but not to the users themselves mentioning that the social media users actually enjoy their "free labor" just like peasants were happy from the Feudalism system in Middle Ages.
The intriguing part of the interview, took place when Mishal Husain started talking about X' payment system and the general integration of native payment systems in the social medial platforms in comparison with WeChat a Chinese all-in app as another example of a global monopoly platform. Yet, Varoufakis initially praised Elon Musk for the "brilliant" purchase of Twitter when the whole world was critical on that business move because Elon wanted to create his own all-in app, his own WeChat. Varoufakis explained that his support comes from the fact that WeChat provides free and commission-free payments and that even Zuckerberg failed to do the same after discontinuing his ambitious project of Facebook-based payments in Libra which has been transformed in Sui, a Layer-2 Protocol developed from the team behind Libra.
And then the discussion took an interesting twist when he also explained that Libra was actually "killed" from Wall Street who saw Libra as a threat to its financial establishment. Trying to defend Elon Musk bussiness move, He continued by saying that Wall Street is also running after Elon's efforts for an independent payment system for the exactly same reasons because it is exactly what the world is asking about, an independent commission-free payment system without any monetary middlemen such as the mainstream Banks who are charging consumers for using their own money. A preposterous policy! Yet, he doesn't encourage people to use a free payment system owing by a private company and not from a universal consensus. in fact, he proposes a revolutionary third way for commission-free payment system established by the Central Banks either through a FED digital wallet app if a consumer lives in USA or an ECB digital wallet app if a consumer lives in European Union! And undoubtedly the European Central Bank is working for years now on a Digital Euro project as an astonishing monetary innovation under the advisory of the Digital Euro Association. About the Digital Euro Project, you can also read the relevant article "A critical eye on Digital Euro" that I wrote few months ago and in which Yanis Varoufakis was again a protagonist.
And although the Chinese Central Bank is already doing this, Yanis Varoufakis highlights again that it is the Wall Street that doesn't allow the development of a relevant Digital Dollar project on the United States! In a relevant way, it is the German and French Banks in Frankfurt and Paris that are saturating the functionality of the Digital Euro Project because obviously they will lose their share in the market and their jobs!
So in conclusion, Yanis Varoufakis finally stated that he is against Elon Musk ambition to have his own cryptocurrency and WeChat's payment system because he believes that people shouldn't provide more exorbitant power in the hands of an individual as it happened with internet retail market with the examples mainly of Amazon. Instead people in REAL democracies should focus on a more democratic and social electronic payment system such the one developed by Satoshi Nakamoto. After all, Yanis Varoufakis believes in a collectible digital payment system because people create money collectively. People's money should always stays People's Money.
Finally, he throws the ball to the humanity to develop open-source democratic versions of the big tech companies and oligarchy in order to fight monopolies and democratize economy.
Final Thoughts
Although the first part of the interview was rather financially technical providing the root of the problem which is the tech feudalism of the Big Tech companies, I find the second part extremely informative about the future ideal digital payment system. I totally agree with Yanis Varoufakis ideas and extend them to the cryptocurrency world. The solution of a FREE payment system isn't a cryptocurrency privately-owned from an individual or a meme to trade it on our spare time but a REAL democratic cryptocurrency owned by NOONE and by EVERYONE at the same time as it was described on the paper "A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" by Satoshi Nakamoto.
I will close with a tweet on X from Doha News about Yanis Varoufakis radical criticism that Western Corporations are actually complicit in Israel's occupation and genocide against Palaistinians by supporting Israel's military and surveillance infrastructure.
Disclaimer: All information found on this article is for informational purposes only. I do not provide any personal investment advice so please make your own research before proceeding to any investment/trading actions
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