Londoner ‘Joe Rogan’ and crypto activist Brian Rose make mayoral bids
Pro-crypto American businessman Brian Rose is again running for Mayor of London.
Londoners will go to the polls on May 2 to choose their next mayor, with incumbents Sadiq Khan and Susan Hall running for office.
Rose previously She ran for office in 2021 and got 1.2% of the vote, but this time she expects to improve on that result.
Rose spoke with Cointelegraph to explain why he decided to run again in 2024.
“I really like London. I have been around for over 20 years. This city gave me everything: my business, my purpose. My two children were born here. “I plan to be buried in the city,” Rose said. “So this is my way of giving back.”
A staunch advocate for freedom of speech, Rose has conducted long-running interviews on the “Digital Freedom Forum,” drawing comparisons to mainstream podcaster Joe Rogan. His guests cover topics such as politics, security, self-improvement and wealth. Many of Rose's interview subjects, which inform his political views, come from the world of blockchain and cryptocurrency.
Rose told Cointelegraph that the current UK leadership is not doing enough to promote the crypto industry.
“I believe that by pushing London as a crypto-first city, we can bring a huge amount of business and industry,” Rose said. Unfortunately we don't have that now and the Prime Minister is paying a lot of lip service.
In the year By 2022, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has expressed his desire to make the UK a “global hub for crypto asset technology”, but by 2024 there is little evidence of progress towards this goal.
Rose argues that Sunac is not alone in underperforming. The entrepreneur believes the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) – which regulates cryptocurrency in the UK – is wrong.
“The FCA and other organizations are pushing companies, and that's a shame,” Rose said.
Blockchain use cases and London coin
Rose tells Cointelegraph that his relationship with Bitcoin (BTC) and cryptocurrency has been around for a long time.
London Real regularly features high-profile names from the cryptocurrency world. The entrepreneur explains how he has attracted big names for interviews in the past:
“I started showing top 100 people in crypto, and they said ‘yes' to me because I had two million YouTube subscribers. This is probably the biggest channel you can do,” he said.
“I had access to Michael Saylor, Raoul Pal, Yat Siu and most of the founders of Layer-1 — Justin Sun, Hedera Hashgraph, Avax — and they taught me about blockchain.”
“In 2013, I had Max Keizer on my show talking about Bitcoin. That's when I bought my first Bitcoin and went down the rabbit hole. He later introduced me to Andreas Antonopoulos in 2015, '17 and '19. Some people call Bitcoin Jesus,” Rose said.
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Rose is further pushing a tough policy agenda on cryptocurrency and blockchain. One of his ideas to win over Londoners was to create a “London Coin”.
According to Rose, the token will bring in £100 per London resident from a levy on the traditional financial sector.
“We want to inject £1bn of liquidity into the city of London with a one-off 1% tax on banks that make all their money and probably pay nothing,” Rose said.
“Then what we're going to do is put it in the wallet and hand of every man, woman and child, and have them take that share of extra produce and pay for public transport and other services there and then. If we can do this in the next 12 months, it could be replicated in many other cities. .
Rose added, “I want something super practical with DeFi functionality in there. So this is the plan for the London coin.
Blockchain for Democracy
For Rose, blockchain goes beyond financial applications. The election hopeful also cites a 2005 Ipsos survey that found “two out of five British voters are concerned about electoral fraud” and supports the blockchain-based voting system.
While that research may be getting a little long in the tooth, recent events in London are unlikely to improve voter confidence. In the year In 2015, London Mayor Lutufur Rahman was found guilty of electoral fraud in East London's Tower Hamlets. Rahman was ordered to pay £250,000 and the election was re-run. Rahman dropped out that year.
In the year In March 2022, Communities Minister Kemi Badenoch wrote to the Metropolitan Police and the Electoral Commission to raise concerns that voter fraud could happen again. In May 2022, Rahman was re-elected to Tower Hamlets.
Rose sees a similar problem across the Atlantic, the erosion of voter confidence after the last US presidential election.
“After the 2020 election, especially in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, I've heard a lot of people say that city hasn't had a fair election in 100 years,” Rose said.
In a press release issued on April 25, Rose stated that blockchain “will help voters view and request votes and provide a permanent, accessible and reliable record of the election process.”
Regarding the London election, Rose told Cointelegraph: “I don't blame anyone for rigging the election. But I am saying that the task of the London electorate is to make the British people believe that their vote matters.
Electoral London is the body responsible for the mayoral elections in London.
Running with Ofcom and YouTube
Rose, the long-time host of the London Real podcast, is not without critics or controversies.
In fact, much of Rose's politics is tied to the podcast and its broadcast events.
In the year In 2020, during the UK's Covid-19 lockdown, Rose aired an episode of London Real featuring professional conspiracy theorist David Eck. Ike is known for promoting the theory that the UK royal family is transmuting lizards from outer space (or another dimension).
Freedom-of-speech advocate Rose told Cointelegraph, “I by no means agree with everything my guests say, but I believe they have a right to speak.
In 2020, EK presented several conspiracies regarding Covid-19. At the London Real, EK blamed an electromagnetic “soup of radiation toxicity” for damaging the immune systems of the elderly and said a cult was using the virus to create an “Orwellian global empire” enabled by artificial intelligence.
Ofcom, the UK's communications regulator, has received 48 complaints about London's Real Broadcasting.
“We did not incite violence. We are not motivated to overthrow the government. It was literally just two people talking. But I guess that was considered dangerous,” Rose said.
On the podcast, Rose disagreed with or completely disagreed with Ick's theories.
“I believe in science, and I believe in vaccines,” he told Eck at the time.
However, Rose was censored, and the broadcast was removed from YouTube. Ofcom later ruled that it “had the potential to cause significant harm to viewers in London during the coronavirus crisis”.
Digital freedom platform
His YouTube channel, Censor Rosen, has set him on the path to creating a “digital freedom platform”, a website that hosts London real-time broadcasts. He no longer uploads to YouTube, telling Cointelegraph that he was permanently kicked off the platform eight months ago.
Rose's followers crowdfund the Digital Freedom Platform with $1 million. At the time of the addition, Rose said $200,000 would be allocated to blockchain technology.
Cointelegraph asked Rose how that blockchain integration is going.
“The problem is that putting video on the blockchain is still not practical,” Rose explained. “There are a couple of companies I'm talking to in Dubai right now, but now in terms of bandwidth, it's almost impossible.”
He added: “I would love for you to do it because we continue to be censored.”
In an interview with PoliticsJoe in April 2021, Rose gave another rationale for implementing blockchain into the Digital Freedom Platform. He said he “spent the money” on other aspects of the platform, including live streams.
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When Cointelegraph spoke with Rose, the broadcaster was in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, promoting the documentary We Will Not Be Silent. The documentary is set in 2020 at London's Real Censorship and stars David Aiken, with whom Rose has developed an increasingly close working relationship in recent years.
At the premiere, Rose said, “Before I was a free speech advocate, now I'm a radical. […] They picked the wrong white boy.
Rose told Cointelegraph that he plans to spend the last few days of the campaign in London, aiming to get every last vote he can. If the entrepreneur captures five percent of the vote or more, Rose will strengthen his case to be included in future televised mayoral debates — should he decide to run again.
London will go to the polls on May 2.
