Canada Was the Beta Test. The US is Next (El Salvador is the Fix) | Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovsky

If the state can freeze your life savings for a peaceful protest, do you actually own your money? Chris Pavlovski (@chrispavlovski) moved Rumble to Florida after witnessing this reality in Canada. We explore how government censorship is a strategy to maintain the fiat status quo and why the only solution is to build a parallel world for the sovereign individual.

The shift in Canada serves as a warning for every HODLer. Chris breaks down how independent media is being choked out by state-funded propaganda and restrictive laws. Relying on big tech platforms for permission to speak is a losing game for those who value the truth.

Rumble is building the physical cloud infrastructure required for a free internet. Being cancel-proof means owning the servers and data centers so no authority can flip a switch to turn you off. By refusing the content moderation demands of Brazil and Russia, Rumble proves a platform can succeed through a proof of work ethos.

Financial sovereignty is the final piece of the puzzle. Rumble has integrated a non-custodial wallet to bypass fiat gatekeepers using Bitcoin and Tether Gold. This ensures creators can never be debanked by using decentralized rails that no authority can seize.

The battle for attention is moving to Rumble Shorts, providing a censorship resistant alternative to state-aligned algorithms. Filmed in El Salvador, this talk highlights why the sovereign individual is moving toward freedom. Subscribe before the thought police find the delete button.

—Bitcoin Beach Team

Connect and Learn more about (Chris Pavlovsky)
X: https://x.com/chrispavlovski
X: https://x.com/rumblevideo
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-pavlovski-8a60a63/
Rumble: https://www.rumble.cloud/
Web: https://www.cosmicdevelopment.com/
Web: https://macedonia2025.com/
Web: https://northerndata.de/home

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Browse through this quick guide to learn more about the episode:
00:00 Intro
05:04 How did Canada weaponize the banking system against protesters?
08:04 Why is the CBC considered a state propaganda machine?
09:28 How to build a cloud infrastructure resilient to government censorship?
12:27 What methods do governments use to force content moderation?
15:00 Why did Rumble exit Brazil and Russia instead of censoring?
18:11 Why is El Salvador the headquarters for the sovereign individual?
20:30 How does the Tether alliance build a cancel-proof economy?
23:32 How to tip creators using a non-custodial wallet and Bitcoin?
30:46 Is Rumble Shorts a censorship resistant alternative to TikTok? 

Live From Bitcoin Beach

Transcript

Mike Peterson: 0:27

All right, guys, my name is Mike Peterson. I'm the host of the live from Bitcoin beach podcast, and I have the privilege today of interviewing Chris Pawlowski on the rumble stage. So what better place to interview the the CEO of rumble than than on the rumble stage? So welcome Chris.

Chris Pavlovsky: 0:48

Thanks for having me. This is a it's great to be in El Salvador again. I've been here a few times, but it gets better every single time I'm here.

Mike Peterson: 0:56

Well, like, like chimbara was saying earlier, you need to, you need to start looking at some real estate down here, so you have, when you fly down, you your clothes and stuff are already ready for you.

Chris Pavlovsky: 1:07

Yeah, that's not a bad idea, that's for sure.

Mike Peterson: 1:10

So one thing is, I was, was thinking about this interview, growing up in the US, you kind of grew up with this assumption that everybody in the world values free speech, that it's something that everybody would say is one of the most important things to have for a good democracy. And as I got older, especially as I moved down here in El Salvador and interacted with a lot of Europeans, a lot of Canadians, I realized that's maybe not. There's not the same emphasis. So I'm just curious for you as a Canadian, how did growing up in Canada and kind of seeing some of the suppression of free speech, did that influence how you thought about the need for something like rumble?

Chris Pavlovsky: 1:59

So I don't think Canada was different at all compared to America when it comes to free speech in terms of growing up, going to school, what we thought about it, how we thought about it, how we looked at it, like I remember, like it was yesterday, being on the school playground with my friends, and, you know, people will hurl jokes at people, and they'll be like, it's, we live in a free country. It's free speech. We can say whatever we want. That happened in Canada, and that happened in my life. So it, I don't think it was very I would imagine America is pretty much the same thing growing up as a child, it free speech was sacred. Even in Canada, growing up, everybody understood that having the ability to talk, you know, truth to power, to be able to say what you think and not tell not being able to tell people what you can say or what you cannot hear or hear, that wasn't a thing. It was nothing like it was something that we all knew was very important. You know, I grew up in the 90s and the late I was born in the early 80s, and going to school in the 90s, and even in the 80s, as a little child like we all knew that free speech was sacred, and we all knew we could say whatever we want on the playground without any repercussions. That was just like the normal life as a child, the normal life as we were taught by our parents. It was, it was something that was ingrained in me as a Canadian growing up, and ingrained in probably every child that I that I remember growing up in Canada, so and you kind of saw like a segment of Canada during the trucker protest really, like vocalized their opinions. And, you know, they all exercise their right to free speech to speak against the government, and that was a big portion of Canada. The trucker protest was something that was like worldwide, known in all American media, and probably world, worldwide media, of people standing up against their government to speak freely of what they thought about covid. So it was, I don't think there was much of a difference between the Canadian and American childhood growing up. And it's certainly that childhood has certainly inspired me to do what I've done today.

Mike Peterson: 4:24

I'm curious. Talking about the trucker protest that you know, some of the things that came after that with them, them going and debanking a number of the people, the way that they were threatened as basically as criminals, for how they were speaking out. For me, that was kind of shocking as an American, because no matter how woke America has gotten, that's been something that people wouldn't accept. But I talked to a lot of Canadians that said, Well, it's a good thing they should do that, because those people are disrupting society. And so when do you think that shift happened in Canada? Was that something that just. Recent or is that something that's kind of been building on each other?

Chris Pavlovsky: 5:04

I think it happened in the last 10 years. There's definitely been a shift in Canadian culture and the way they they view American politics and the way they view the world. And it's certainly, you know, when that happened, it was shocking to everybody that protested. It was shocking to me. I I always look at Canada, it's always seems to be like a testing ground of what could have, what could come to the United States. And when they saw that, it was something that really, kind of, you know, the government really crossed a red line in a way that I never thought I would ever see in a democracy like Canada. But to answer your question, the shift happened like 10 years ago, and I would say it's a culmination of many different things. One is that the government started cracking down on media, on social media. So I don't know if you know this, but in Canada, when you're on Instagram or you're on Facebook and you click on a link that's perceived to be any type of political news, it will say, we cannot take you there. It is censored by the by the platform, and it's censored by the platform due to some laws and restrictions that the government's imposing on the social media platforms. So Canada's in a in in this isolation, I would say it when it comes to media where you can you it's very difficult to seek out independent media on any of the social media platforms, and you're confined to all the corporate media that exists on all the televisions. And it gets even worse, like Canada has state owned media, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which is funded by the government. You know, for me, that's that's not media, that that's a propaganda arm for the for the Canadian government. So I don't believe in that. I don't think any government should participate in that. And that's one of the largest media organizations getting hundreds of millions of dollars from the Canadian government to and obviously, if you're getting hundreds of millions dollars from the Canadian government, you're not going to really talk negatively about the incumbent government, whereas on rumble, you're going to talk negatively of whoever you want to talk about being that it's independent media. So I think in the last 10 years, with all these restrictions on social media, with the fact that the Liberal government in Canada and Trudeau started funding CBC so heavily, this has culminated into a version of Canada that has given only a certain perspective to the majority of the population, and they haven't really been able to really test that or even explore different opinions. And when they hear different opinions, they're not even open to even listening to it or hearing it. So I think that's kind of what's happened. It's really loud. Those are some nice planes going over. Look at that. They're

Mike Peterson: 8:04

doing a flyover for us. Yeah.

Chris Pavlovsky: 8:07

So, yeah, I think that's kind of what's resulted to the population having the opinions that they've had. And unfortunately, it doesn't look like it's getting any better anytime soon. It's actually progressively getting worse. And, you know, there's been a lot of population change in the last 10 years as well, with a lot of immigration. Canada, I think, has had, you know, around 5 million new people come to the country in the in the last five years, which is quite a lot. So that's had impact on on on narratives and in news, and I think all of this together has created an environment where people are not open to hearing other perspectives and not not even curious like they are in the United States.

Mike Peterson: 8:55

So how has rumble kind of like walked that line with being able to stay live in Canada, I'm assuming you guys still function in Canada, but with those type of restrictions or strengths, I know you guys have a reputation for not bowing to demands, first, for censorship that you guys have pulled out of countries. And I want to, I want to get into the details of that a little bit more after you answer the Canada question, but I know you guys have stood strong on that. So how have you guys been able to kind of weave through that?

Chris Pavlovsky: 9:28

Well, you know, we moved to the United States in 2021, I guess was the main answer to that question. So we didn't. We definitely don't. We're not in Canada in the way that we were when we first started. And it's unfortunate because, like, it's we're a multi billion dollar company that had to leave the country it was born in because of the potential of bills coming in that would be so pro censorship and so anti democratic. And quite honestly. Relating all human rights. And we had, you know, we were kind of like, forced to move to Florida and because of that, and since then, it's been the greatest decision I've ever made, but it's been, it's very unfortunate that Canada pushes out companies like rumble for no good reason. In fact, they should be, it should be, I think rumble should, should be cherished by Canada. It's, it's protecting free speech. It's protecting freedom of expression. Freedom expression is article 19 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. It is a human right to uphold freedom of expression, and Canada has an obligation to do that. But unfortunately, the bills they're trying to push, luckily, they haven't. They haven't gone through yet, but the bills that they're trying to push are very similar to the ones that you see that are happening in Europe. And I'm not sure how long Canada will be able to stay a free society and be able to uphold freedom of expression. I just I don't even see the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation doing that. I don't see them challenging the government the way they should challenge the government. It's becoming a one narrative driven country that doesn't really have any competing voices. And even when you look at the Conservative Party in Canada, you know, I in the last election, it got to a point where I didn't really see much difference between the two parties in terms of optionality. They they were kind of saying the same thing. One month prior to the election, a year ago, it looked like when the trucker process happened, it looked like the Conservative Party was completely different. And then a month before the elections, it felt like the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party were one in the same. They were literally repeating the same, the same talking points.

Mike Peterson: 11:47

Can Can you explain to us because and this something I've personally wondered about, so I'm very happy to be able to ask you, how do governments pressure you and force you to invoke censorship on the platform if you don't, I understand, if you have offices in that country, if you have assets, they can seize if you have employees there, but if you don't have any physical presence, if you're operating from the US, what type of methods do they use to force you and why have you guys, At times, had to decide we're just gonna, like, shut down in that country rather than bow to the censorship?

Chris Pavlovsky: 12:27

Well, I think our approach has changed. Let's talk Brazil and let's talk Russia. In in Russia, they sent us a notice to remove a bunch of creators on our platform. We said no, we didn't we didn't even respond. We didn't even say No, we just didn't respond. And they shut off the platform entirely in Russia, in Brazil, the same thing happened, and we we did respond to them, and we said no when they asked us to remove content from the platform, not because the content violated our terms of service, it's because they didn't like the person or the com what the person was saying and it was opposing their current government, and we denied that as well. And unfortunately, Brazil, the Supreme Court Justice the Brazil took it to the telcos and shut us off at the IP levels and shut off rumble to the entire country. So in those instances we we were in a state where we have no power and no control to do anything, they just inflict penalties on us and they turn us off at the telco level. Same thing in China. We did something different in France many years ago, and it actually proved to be the best route in France, we ended up turning off our they sent us demands to turn off a bunch of content on rumble in particular, I think it was like Russia today. It's ironic, because Russia turns us off too, but like they asked us to turn off, turn off Russia today. And we said, No, we're not going to turn off Russia. And they said, Well, if you don't, we're going to turn you off at the telco level. And then we said, we rather turn France off. So we turn France off. And we challenged them in court, and now, about a month ago, we prevailed in court, and now we're back on in France, and the judicial system came back and said that the order that they sent us was invalid. So now we're back in France, and I think that was actually looking back. That was the right approach, and we won. It was the it was the right approach. We, we ended up now rumbles available. We, we fought for free speech, and we won, and now rumbles available in France. And, yeah, so yeah, that's, I think that ended up being the right, the right approach. What?

Mike Peterson: 15:00

When, when they turn you off at the at the telecom level, is, is there very substantial use of VPNs for people to continue using that? I mean, for me, it wouldn't make a big deal. I just use a VPN. Is that not really practical? Or how much usage Do you still have in those countries? I remember when they, you know, said that Twitter was illegal, gonna be illegal in Brazil, and so, of course, you want to put your VPN on Brazil to be using it. Just stick it to them. So I'm just curious, is that practical, or does it really shut down the business model when somebody's forced to use a VPN?

Chris Pavlovsky: 15:37

Yeah, so the VPNs can get around it. There's ways to get around these shutdowns for sure, within the countries, but it's not very practical, because it's such a small percentage that can afford to pay for a VPN to do that, and it's such legwork to go do that that like 99% of the population is not going to do that. So if you're having half a million users in Brazil or a million users in Brazil. You're not going to reach the Brazilians anymore on mass, because on mass, 99% of the users are not going to go get a VPN, just so they can go access the content. It just, unfortunately, it's not something that people do in mass. There is cohort that would do it, but it doesn't work. In the case of x, they they did promote using a VPN, but at the end of the day, they ended up capitulating, and it capitulated to all the censorship demands that Brazil requested in order to get back into Brazil so they could access that user base. The VPN route just did not work.

Mike Peterson: 16:38

So are you guys still non functional in Brazil.

Chris Pavlovsky: 16:41

Yeah, we're the only ones that don't capitulate to censorship demand. There is no platform that does. Let's hear it for them.

Mike Peterson: 16:50

That's no I love to see when countries, when companies actually stand up for what they say they believe in. A lot of companies will say one thing, but when push comes to shove. They go where, where the dollars are.

Chris Pavlovsky: 17:03

So yeah, unfortunately, it's just us. There really isn't anyone doing that. And it's unfortunate, because if every if, if x would do it with us and Facebook would do it with us, then they would fold. We would win. Free speech would win. But we need, we need more people with with with more courage.

Mike Peterson: 17:26

I'm curious, when it comes to these censorship demands, are they usually pretty clear, or they oftentimes subtle, of like, hey, we'd really appreciate if you didn't do this or this is disturbing to us, or are they? Are the politicians usually willing to be honest about what they're asking for? Or is it often kind of behind the scenes, them trying to manipulate you? Oh no.

Chris Pavlovsky: 17:50

It's, it's overt. It's it comes down with strength. They write a letter and it's very explicit, and they're serious. Governments don't play around. It's if they don't like something, they're going to come after you, and they're going to come after you hard. So there's no, there's no playing around for a government.

Mike Peterson: 18:11

I know you guys have kind of, I don't, I don't know if you mentioned it, or maybe it was just people hopeful mentioned it, but of opening up some type of operations here in El Salvador. I know you've I think this is at least your second trip down here, right?

Chris Pavlovsky: 18:28

Yeah, I was, I think it's like my fourth trip, third

Mike Peterson: 18:31

or fourth. So I'm curious is to is there, is there any plans to have normal operations?

Chris Pavlovsky: 18:37

We want to have a presence here. We've been exploring that. We're continuing to explore that. Obviously, tether took a big stake in rumble, and they they moved their headquarters here. So I think their headquarter, I think their headquarter in El Salvador, and they're going to be building towers here. And when they do that, we definitely want to have a presence here with them. So El Salvador is a very unique place in the world. In fact, when I look at El Salvador, it's the model for many, many countries that they should take. They are obviously very pro Bitcoin. But I think it's, it's not Bitcoin in itself. It's the idea behind bitcoin. What they're pro they're pro freedom. And the idea of being so forward thinking and believing in that type of ethos is something that I think every country should, should adopt. I think, like when you look at the First Amendment, that's the first amendment in Bitcoin, the ethos is the same. It's free speech. It's giving everybody their own independence. And I think what they're doing in El Salvador is a model that the rest of the world needs to follow, and it's something that is so close to what we do at rumble. You know, having a home here just makes sense now when we do it and how we do it, you know, that's going to have to take some thought. It. But you know, having tether here already is something that you know helps us lead the way. So we definitely want to be here. And I love this place.

Mike Peterson: 20:10

I'm curious as to what you see as the synergies of your link up with tether, and obviously, besides the big financial investment they made. But how do you see kind of partnering with tether as furthering what the goals are of rumble?

Chris Pavlovsky: 20:30

Yeah, so tether and rumble have a vision like when I when I met Paulo, it was shocking to me to see that a company of their size had the exact same type of thought around freedom of expression, decentralization that I did. It's a very rare thing to see people care about the ability for people to have freedom as much as the tether folks so that alone was like perfection when I when I met them, and then when they took the stake into rumble, and now they own a very large portion of rumble. And when we started getting things going, we, you know, the vision has been from the very beginning with rumble, and when we went public, we kind of put that out there, all the things that we want to do. But the vision that we have with Rumble is very simple. We want to be a freedom first technology platform which has buckets of freedom for everything that we do. And when I talk about buckets of freedom, I'm talking about on media. We're freedom of speech on infrastructure. We're freedom for cloud, freedom to build on advertising. We give you the freedom to reach people on on AI. We want to, we want to get into AI. We just purchased a company called northern data, which is has one of the largest GPU estates in Europe. And obviously, GPUs support AI tremendously on LLM models, etc. We want to be able to put AI in your pocket that you own, not not another company that owns. We just want to be the underlining infrastructure for that. So we want to bring freedom to every single pillar of business that we do, because we believe the future is going to be very different than what it was in the last 20 years. The last 20 years was companies like Microsoft and Google and Amazon controlling everything. They were they were pro censorship. They were very biased. They were in law. They you had to do locked in contracts for everything. They're very centralized. And we are the complete opposite. Though, I see the future going completely opposite. It's going to all be it's going to it's going to be all about privacy, it's going to be all about independence. It's going to be all about decentralization. And ultimately, all that means is that everything is going to be all about freedom, and we want to provide all the tools across all the tech ecosystems and all those tech pillars that I just named that is going to provide freedom, privacy, decentralization to the people, and that's what we're trying to build. And we want to build an ecosystem that's going to compete against the big tech companies in the fiercest way possible.

Mike Peterson: 23:14

I'm there's a couple things I wanted to ask you about there, but the first on the wallet rollout, I know that's been a big project that you guys recently have rolled out, so I'm curious as to what, what you see is the main objective of that, and then how that has been going so far.

Chris Pavlovsky: 23:32

Yeah, so, and that's another pillar of the the freedom offering that we're putting out there for the people we want them to we want creators. We want viewers, the freedom to transact without anybody taking away their money. We know about the trucker protests. The banks took away their money. Rumble, cannot take away your money in the wallet. It is. It is a non custodial wallet. It's untouchable by us. We don't control it, which means you better know what your seed phrase is, because we're not helping you get that seed phrase because we don't know it, but it is. We launched it in the first week of January, and it's out now for everybody to use. And the beauty of the rumble wallet is, not only can you buy bitcoin, you can tether and X, A, U, T, which is tether gold, which I which I love, and I've been stacking in the last since, since the wallet came out. You can also tip your favorite creators in Bitcoin, X, A, U, T and USD, T, and very soon, USAT and your creators can now earn Bitcoin and earn crypto for the very first time from their viewers using the rumble wallet, and it's super seamless. You can literally whoever you follow on rumble. You'll see them in your app, and you can just send them money with a click of a button. And it's it's just like, you know, Venmo or Zelle, or anything else that you might use in the United States, except now you're sending Bitcoin. Tether or X, A, U, T, so that's off to a flying start, and we're going to there's going to be a lot more coming with that in the coming months, but it's now out there, and it's now another pillar of what we offer at rumble across our freedom technology ecosystem.

Mike Peterson: 25:16

You had mentioned earlier, just just the challenge of competing with these kind of global media giants. And I'm curious as to why you think Rumble was able to kind of break out, you know, kind of in the orbit there's been so many freedom focused platforms that could never get to the scale that they needed in order to be profitable. And so what was it that allowed rumble to get there, and, you know, achieve the valuation that you guys have achieved, and actually become more than just a great idea, but a profitable company that is true to its values?

Chris Pavlovsky: 25:57

You know, that's a really good question. And it's it kind of roots in a couple things. One thing for sure is timing. We're at the right place at the right time. That definitely matters. But you also have to have had to build something. It took a lot of time to build what we built, and we didn't really see our growth until the right timing came around, which was the 2020 elections. And it was actually prior to the 2020 elections, but censorship started ramping up in 2020 but the whole idea behind rumble when we started in 2013 was a type of censorship that was happening that not a lot of people could see. And what it was is that the large platforms, in particular, YouTube, started prioritizing big brands, big corporations, big influencers, and started de prioritizing the small guy, the small creator, your friends, your family, your aunts, your uncles, they and the reason why they did that might have been monetary. It wasn't politics, but it was, it was, it was most certainly not politics at the time, and it more had to do with what I thought was like a revenue opportunity that YouTube saw they needed to monetize. And the way to monetize is they needed to be able to put ads on content that they they could trust, and they didn't trust the small creator. That's kind of the way I saw it. And then fast forward to 2020, and shit hits the fan. Large craters are now getting censored, Shadow banned, completely taken off platforms, and it's now all about politics. And the largest craters in the world started coming to started looking for a place to go, and Rumble was ready and built ready for them to go. So they came, one came, another came, and then all of them came, all of a sudden, and that's kind of what happened. And so I would say it's a it's a combination of being at the right place, at the right time, but also having the right the right vision, the right thought, and kind of seeing something happen before the flood happened like we saw it happen with small craters. We didn't really foresee that it was going to happen to large craters. But we are in the right place at the right time when it did

Mike Peterson: 28:09

and when, when these people have been moving to rumble. Are most of them? Is it just like a backup plan for them? Is it their primary platform? Are they still posting to YouTube? Also, what? What do you kind of see at

Chris Pavlovsky: 28:22

that time? It was everything it was. It was a backup plan for some. It was the primary for others. And then as it grew, it became just another place people came to because now there's audience, and it just was part of their plan. So it was, it really touched all the buckets in terms of for a creator, and then what we saw as we went through the years, it really expanded into different verticals. And it wasn't like a free speech thing as much anymore. It was really just more of like, let's find audience and monetize it.

Mike Peterson: 28:59

I'm curious, do you know, as far as the the audience that watches on rumble, do they they skew? You know, maybe more conservative, more obviously, they value free speech. But do you see a political skew on the rumble platform? Or do you feel like it's across the board?

Chris Pavlovsky: 29:16

So prior to 2020, our politics were cats and dogs primarily, and then once the election happened, it became a lot of political creators came on, and that definitely skewed to the conservative Republican side, as they were, you know, seeing like, for example, one of the stories is the first crater that came was Congressman Devin Nunes, And He came in the summer of 2020 and, you know, I was a Canadian, and I'm sitting there and I get a call from the ranking member of the US House Intel Committee, and I'm thinking, holy shit, Am I under investigation for something like, what's up? And he's like, Chris, I bring my podcast over to your platform, and I search for my name. Am I going to find it? And I'm like, Yeah, I think so. And he comes, he brings, within two months, he had two to 300,000 subscribers on rumble, whereas for four years as the congressional leader in California and his district, he only had 10,000 subs after four years. So that's kind of, you know, once someone saw that, like Devin, the word spread, and it was like it was a flood after that. But that's, that's kind of how it happened.

Mike Peterson: 30:31

Well, unfortunately, we're, we're out of time, but I did want to ask just real quick, what, what are you most looking forward to, the in the plans that you guys have going forward. Like, what is, what is the thing that you think is going to set apart rumble?

Chris Pavlovsky: 30:46

Yeah, so obviously, I love the vision that we have going forward with these freedom pillars, but, like, more immediately, like, right now, I'm like, super excited about launching rumble shorts that's coming out next week. So we're gonna take free speech against Tiktok here in the next coming weeks. And that's, that's, that's obviously a really large initiative. Not only will rumble wallet be tied into our rumble shorts so you can tip your favorite creators super seamlessly. But yeah, I'm super excited for launching this in February, along many other things that we're doing, like rumble studio, but rumble shorts is the next big thing for us. Awesome. Well, I just

Mike Peterson: 31:30

want to thank you for everybody here in the Bitcoin community for standing strong on your values and not bowing to censorship demands. We need more companies like rumble. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Applause.