Steve Bannon, former Chief Strategist to US President Donald Trump, said that cryptocurrencies could be an asset to the European anti-establishment movement at an event sponsored by the Swiss newspaper Die Weltwoche on March 6.

At his lecture in Zurich, Bannon stated that cryptocurrencies and the Blockchain will “empower [the populist] movement, empower companies, [and] empower governments to get away from the central banks that debase your currency and makes slave wages.”

With cryptocurrency “We take control of the central banks away. That will give us the power again.” Bannon sees broad use and integration of cryptocurrencies and the Blockchain as means of emancipation from establishment forces that have created “a new serfdom.”

“Once you take control of your currency, once you take control of your data, once you take control of your citizenship, that’s when you’re going to have true freedom,” said Bannon.

Bannon accused governments, central banks, and tech companies of taking away the rights and identities of ordinary people and using them for their own purposes.

Bannon is travelling in Europe on a speaking tour following right-wing victories in the recent Italian elections. In the lecture, Bannon speaks at length about how cryptocurrencies and the Blockchain can be instruments of the movement of right nationalism.

Previous to working at the Trump administration, Bannon was a founding member on the board of Breitbart News, which became known as a voice of the alt-right movement in the US with an outspoken brand of anti-establishment far-right rhetoric and reporting. Bannon was an adviser to President Trump as well as a member of the National Security Council before being dismissed from the White House in August 2017.

As previously reported by Cointelegraph, the canton of Zug in Switzerland is establishing a global hub for crypto and Blockchain that’s come to be known as “Crypto Valley”. The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) has implemented forward-thinking policies towards cryptocurrencies, making Switzerland a competitive environment for developing crypto, Blockchain, and distributed ledger technologies.