Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies - Tuur Demeester: Investing in Bitcoin

Episode Date: October 10, 2016

In 2012, a year after discovering Bitcoin in Argentina, Dutch economist Tuur Demeester became one of the first people to advocate investing in Bitcoin to a mainstream audience. Tuur joined us to discuss his thesis for investing in Bitcoin and how it has evolved over time. We also talked about the road ahead and how other cryptocurrencies and Ethereum compare as investment opportunities. Topics covered in this episode: How Tuur discovered Bitcoin in Argentina in 2011 The case for investing in Bitcoin The current state of Bitcoin and metrics he looks at Projections for the Bitcoin price How Bitcoin compares to gold The current state of the financial markets Episode links: How to Position for the Rally in Bitcoin Report Why I'm Short Ethereum (and long Bitcoin) Why Bitcoin is the Petroleum of Our Time Bitcoin - Why It Now Belongs in Every Porfolio Adamant Research Podcast on Soundcloud Tuur Demeester Twitter This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/152

This is Epicenter, Episode 152 with guest Tour de Maester. This episode of Epicenter is brought you by Jax. Jacks is the user-friendly wallet that works across all your devices and handles both Bitcoin and Ether. Go to JAAWX.io and embrace the future of cryptocurrency wallets. And by Hyde. DotMe, protect yourself against hackers and safeguard your identity online with a first-class VPN. Go to hide.combe slash Epicenter and sign up for a free account today. Hi, welcome to Epicenter, the show which talks about the technologies, projects, and people driving decentralization and the global blockchain revolution. My name is Sebastian Kujo.

And my name is Brian Fabian Crane. We're here today with Tour de Meester. Tour is actually somebody who was on this podcast before. He didn't remember. I also had to check whether it was the case, but it is indeed the case. He was in one of the first episodes that we did in February 2014 when we were at... Actually, this was also when Sebastian and I met for the first time at Bitcoin, Inside Bitcoin's conference in Berlin, two was there as well.

We did a bunch of different interviews, shorter, like, five, ten minute interviews, and one of them was with him. So he's been around for a very long time in the Bitcoin space. He's an economist and an investor, and he's editor-in-chief at the company called Admin Research. And among other things, he's been, oh, he was the first, or one of the first people to recommend Bitcoin as an investment to a more kind of mainstream audience, I guess. So it's a pleasure to have you on tour. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, so, well, I guess let's get started with that. How did you originally learn about Bitcoin and how did that journey start for you? Yeah, like,

overall, it was in 2006, seven, and then obviously eight, I started feeling uneasy about the economy. and that's kind of why I like worked harder to to try and do something online and try and also do something with investing because because I knew things were going to shift and I kind of wanted to know long term what to do in that area even if I was going to work in another area and so that grew into a professional activity and so I had been the main thing that I was looking for seeing that there's so much debt all around the world corporate debt, but especially sovereign debt, governments and states and so on, I was looking for assets that have low counterparty risk, and so I was looking hard into gold and silver and those kind of things. But then when I was doing a trip in Argentina, which was in a way also, it was also research. I was trying to see if, you know, I would want to live in Latin America at some point, which I eventually did. And so I was traveling around there, and I met some people, and they were super excited.

This was, I think, April, 2011, probably April, May, June. Very excited about Bitcoin. And they explained to me how it was useful to them and also how it was accessible to them. I mean, this was one of the countries, one of the harshest capital controls. And still, these people could, you know, internationally trade using Bitcoin. So that's where it caught my attention and where it started researching it. So back then, people were actually using Bitcoin in Argentina? Like, in what way were they using it?

Well, so these guys had bought some graphic cards and mined Bitcoins, like found a way to mine Bitcoin. And so early on, there wasn't a lot in terms of what you could, you know, what you could buy. You can buy some Alpaca socks back in the day and maybe a pizza, but not a lot at all. But at the time, even then, it was used sometimes for remittance. I have heard like stories of even like real estate transactions and stuff like that.

So, yeah, there was some use there. And also as a tourist, because if you wanted to buy the local currency and you went to a bank, you would pay the official rate, which was vastly overpriced. You would buy the pesos at vastly higher prices. Then if you had either dollar cash on you and exchange in the street, or you had a buddy or on local bitcoins, you found someone who would. sell you some Bitcoin and then you got the market rate. So back when this was going on, this was in what year you mentioned?

So that's 2011. Okay. So did you get this feeling then that so the Argentinians were looking at this of some sort of refuge store of value? Was there, what was the sentiment there with regards to sort of the, you know, Argentinians? Central Bank and the Argentine financial system? Well, I went to one of the first meetups in Argentina, and there were like five people. It was like a barbecue.

It was five people. But then later when I came back, I think it was like a year later, I came back, and they had almost 100 people at their meetup. And so there was definitely interest. The interest was like in mining. People were just trying to find ways to you know, make some money, and then they were like also traders, people who come in who would like buy and sell or who would provide to the local market. So there's definitely, and so and you, the first Latin American Bitcoin conference was in

Argentina. So there's definitely, and I mean, Sergio Lerner is one of the people that was involved in Bitcoin on the core protocol from very early on. So they have, you know, they definitely have entrepreneurial chops, definitely compare to the other Latin American countries, I think they've been at the forefront. Still, I don't think that, you know, it was seen as the ideal case for Argentina, but the penetration of technology isn't that deep outside of Buenos Aires. So I think that's kind of why that, you know, that mainstream adoption that people had

thought Argentina was going to be the first at didn't really happen, maybe not yet. I don't think, you know, I think if you look at who is at the forefront right now, it's maybe like countries like Netherlands and Israel where you have like very high level and a very long tradition of technology innovation and adoption by the general public. So Brian mentioned earlier that we met back in 2014. This was a couple of years later. But I remember being at that Berlin conference and definitely unbanked markets, remittances, this sort of use case was definitely one of the things that a lot of people were talking about at that time. And even back then there was projects like 37 coins and others like it that were really focused on this sort of, you know, bridging this technological gap that you mentioned by allowing people to say send Bitcoins through SMS, that kind of thing. So back then, I agree that there is a lot of use cases centered around sort of bringing financial technology to countries that largely didn't have stable financial systems or financial infrastructure.

Right, right. And I mean, to some extent, I'm not as fast as people had hoped, but to some extent that is becoming a reality. Like Bitcoin definitely is kind of part of the global remittance rails, even. even though it's still a very, very small percentage. But, you know, when I talk to people who are involved in, like, you know, Bitcoin, Btms and stuff, they are seeing volumes pick up and it is actually being used for remittance. So how did you go from saying, okay, this is cool, this is fascinating, this is a great, a great little thing going on here.

How did you go from there to saying this is a good investment? and developed a kind of a thesis around that. And then you also went on to advocate that to other people. What was the kind of the process that happened there? Yeah, that was hard because, I mean, MacroTrans was my first investment newsletter. And so there I was. I was like, we launched in June 2011. So I was like, Bitcoin is awesome.

But like, you know, I don't even know really who my audience is because I was partnering up with a publisher. So he had this huge email list. And I was basically talking to, I think, mainly baby boomers. There are some younger people, too. But so that's part of why I held off a bit. And also the price at the time was still coming down from the 2011 bubble. It had like gone up to $30. And then it went all the way down to $2.

So that was kind of still happening. Yeah, it was pretty scary. But the thing that convinced me was the technology made sense to me. I could see how it just, you know, the concerns that people could have, there were arguments against that. Everything, every question I had was answered. And then on top of that, everybody said it was crazy. Like, everybody said it's a Ponzi scheme. It can't work.

And so the fact that people that weren't even willing to look at it kind of made me think that at least a risk or war. Maybe this is long term. Maybe it will. There's going to be some bugs or problems. but at least right now, the risk or words seems very favorable because, like, literally everyone says it's crazy and it's not an investment. Even the core deaths were, like, imploring me, like, Mike Kern at the time and also Peter Rehler, like, hey, like, this is an experiment. Like, don't, you know, don't invest or at least be very careful. So that was like, oh, well, maybe there's something here.

And I was always like, you know, I always stress that you, you know, you only want to invest a little bit. But yeah, it worked out. And over time, my confidence just only increased. And the main, I am a cryptocurrency maximalist. So the main thing that I was always looking out for is that is there another asset that could be a better digital gold than Bitcoin? Because that's kind of my benchmark. Like Bitcoin is the digital gold. And, you know, that's why I'm looking out for if there are anything else that's better.

And then I might have to revise my thesis that, you know, Bitcoin is the number one digital gold. So you had this email, this newsletter, sent in Macotrends. How did you, how many people were reading that? And what was the kind of feedback you got when you were recommending Bitcoin, both back then and maybe later over time. Did a lot of people follow your advice? Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. So from launch, we had about 400 paying subscribers.

and then we grew to about 1,500. This was in 2013. And then in November 2000, no, actually earlier, summer 2013, I kind of started abandoning the newsletter and I found a successor. So it was all in all, like a pretty brief period. So, yeah, how the reception was, people would email me saying like, yeah, this is nuts,

like this is a Ponzi scheme. Some other people would ask me specific questions, so I would have a section in the newsletter answering, specific questions. I wrote a lot about Bitcoin. I remember kind of looking back in my newsletter, and I think I wrote like 8,000 words before it had $1,000 just on like, you know, what was happening and some analysis and email updates. So I also had an interview with Peter Verlo back in 2012. And so I just tried to address all these concerns. But in the end, I did do a survey, which I think I sent out when Bitcoin was like $400 when I was kind of going up in that steep slope.

late 2013 and I asked like how many of you have actually bought bitcoin and I think it was about 20 percent no actually this is this I already answered this question when at San Jose so this must have been before May 2013 so only 20 percent you know actually bought Bitcoin but I did get stories from people that were like pretty impressive like yeah they you know did very well financially the people who did buy even a little bit. And so I feel really good about that. I just did what I could. And that's kind of the thing with being early.

Like even if you have a newsletter and even if people do pay for your advice, it's still up to them. Like I made some calls that were bad as well. And so maybe they, they, I like that people just make up their own judgments. So how has your investment thesis worked over time? Do you still see it as this digital goal? and even if you see it as a statistical gold, how would you value that?

Like, how would you say it's on the price or overpriced? Like, what's the basis for that? Yeah, that's a good question. So my thesis says actually, I don't think it has changed at all. Like, I'm still, you know, I'm still seeing just everything in the economy being way over levered over it.

Like, banks have leveraged that is just way too high. If everybody gets a, bailout, then we have hyperinflation. If there are no more bailouts, then we have a bail-in, which is, you know, like all the banks have to close because there's not enough money around. And so we need these assets that have very low counterparty risk and that are liquid that you can buy and sell everywhere around the world. So there's a huge, you know, a huge need for an asset that people can use to save in for the long term, not to speculate, not to like do anything like that, but just money, basically.

So yeah, my thesis is actually, I think, the same. Maybe just a bit more refined here and there. So how you would value it? Because, I mean, a thesis is okay, but then, for example, digital gold, there's also the physical gold. So when would, for example, one be overpriced relative to the other? Yeah, that is very, very hard. And I definitely don't have like hard metrics.

I do, like right now, for example, Bitcoin is worth 0.02% of all the physical gold and above ground that has been mined. So I think it's not crazy to say that that could go to 1%, especially because Bitcoin has many of the qualities of physical gold and more, right? It has multi-sig, you can store it in very sophisticated ways that are not possible. physical gold. You can verify that it's real in better ways sometimes than physical gold because that's an issue too. I have known people that have bought

fake coins. Because Toonsten, for example, which in Europe it's known as Wolfram, it's the metal that's inside light bulbs. That has very similar weight. It's a very similar weight to volume ratio than gold. So you can just

mix it in and fake gold bars. So there's these things that you can do with Bitcoin that are really hard to do with physical gold. So in some ways, you can say it's the upgraded version of gold. And then there's some downside risks that gold doesn't have, which is, you know, if there's a 51% attack, you cannot 51% attack physical gold unless maybe you come up with a way to synthesize it in a lab and just produce it out of thin air or something. So they complement each other very well.

And I think, you know, to say that they can, Bitcoin can have 1% and physical gold, the rest is not a stretch. And then from there, we'll see. Because if Bitcoin is 1%, that means the price is, I think, about $3,000. Well, I guess we'd have to go up 50 fold. If you said it was at 0.02 at the moment, right? So if we have 500 times 50, there would actually be $25,000, I think. I remember calculating that 1% of the physical gold is about $3,000. Okay, yeah.

I could be wrong. I think the total of all the gold in the world, and of course these prices fluctuate, is about, I think it's about $5 trillion. Okay, yeah. There's about 5 billion pounds around. Sorry, 5 billion ounces around. Let's take a short break to talk about Jacks. Jacks is a multi-coin wallet created by the people at the Central.

Now in the past, if he had a whole bunch of cryptocurrencies, it was a pain to handle them. You either had to leave them on an exchange, which was insecure, or you had to have all these different wallets, which was a hassle. Fortunately, now with Jacks, those medieval days of darkness, misery, and suffering are over. Jack supports multiple cryptocurrencies and new ones are being added. But it's not just storing cryptocurrencies you can do with Jacks, but you can also exchange them. directly from within side the wallet thanks to their shape-shift integration. And since there's only one seed, Jax makes it super easy to back up and sync to the other devices. Jax works with Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and has browser extensions for Firefox and Chrome.

So go to jacks.io, that's J-A-W-X-I-O to download the wallet and get started today. We'd like to thank Jax for the support of Epicenter. So you mentioned that you think that Bitcoin, is a good vehicle for people to use as a store of values, essentially as a way to save money over the long term. So people buy Bitcoin. It's a good alternative to financial markets and fiat currencies that may or may not be long for a long time or may crash at some point. So it's a refuge value, if I understand correctly what you're saying. So having said that, though, if people use Bitcoin as...

a store of value and people essentially just hold Bitcoin and don't spend it. Isn't that counter to this idea that Bitcoin could be a good investment? Because if people are simply holding it and they're not spending their bitcoins and not creating the economic value around that currency, how will the price go up? How will Bitcoin become more valuable? I think this is a fallacy that Bitcoin needs to be spent in order for, for us to together increase the value of the network, at least I don't think Bitcoin has to be spent more or a lot.

I mean, obviously at some point you would expect it to change hands. But when you look at the function of saving in an economy, what you do is you defer gratification and you build up this pot of value and it grows. And then what you can do is you use it to invest. in a company, for example, or a piece of machinery that will then make something that already has to be done in the economy more efficient. For example, you invest capital in inventing a new type of car. Maybe, you know, like what Elon Musk did with Tesla. That took a lot of saving before that was possible to make that leap. And now the product is there. And it makes, you know,

it reduces deaths on the road. It's more clean, so there's less problems with lung disease maybe over the long run. So there's all kinds of advantages. But that was only possible because of saving. And so I see a similar thing in Bitcoin where if you save in Bitcoin, it really rewards long-term improvements to the economy. because yeah, at some point you will exchange it for maybe something that will yield dividends. You may be, you know, buy a house or invest in a company who will then kind of return some of the profits over time.

But at least with Bitcoin or gold, you don't have this reality chasing you that it's decreasing in value all the time. Your value is not rotting away like with Fiat money. Like back in the 19th century, most people just save in gold. Like, that was a huge part of the economy was just savings in gold. And you weren't forced to buy debt or, like, government bonds or other bonds. You weren't forced to invest in the stock market. Part of the reason why we have all these bubbles is because there is not really a decent medium to save money in for the long run without necessarily wanting to speculate. So I think there's a huge function and it increases prosperity a huge amount over time.

And the more people come in, they kind of lift into Bitcoin. They lift the boat for everyone. There is more value going around. There's a bigger all over market cap. There's more liquidity as a result. So I see all kinds of benefits. And so like this word of like, you know, the derogatory word is often hoarding. It's like, you know, you just hold onto your coins and you sit on it.

First of all, it's not easy. It's not easy at all to just hold some Bitcoin and not ever sell them or that is very hard. But what you do by doing that is you help build a floor under the price. So it's not going to drop below a certain price because you have all these kind of, you know, I forget the word, but you have all these hoarders basically that kind of like support the ecosystem in that sense. And I don't think it's the only function we need. Absolutely, we need developers, we need entrepreneurs, but I think it's a vital part of the Bitcoin community to have people who decide to save in Bitcoin.

Yeah, I very much agree with that. I think the argument around the digital goal is actually pretty strong with Bitcoin, and you don't need that much besides a secure network, and then the ability to trade it for fiat currency, you know, easily kind of all over the world, right? If you have that, that's actually already enough to be good as a store of value. And then you don't necessarily need even the... you know,

opportunity to spend bitcoins and buy your coffee with it. I think that's sort of, it enhances, of course, the usefulness of Bitcoin, but it's not absolutely required. That's kind of bonus, those things like micro transactions,

and then especially like the second layer stuff where, you know, you have the Lightning Network and high-speed transactions. If you look at physical gold, I'm totally not saying that this system is, is anywhere close to perfect. but just as like, you know, it kind of works physical gold.

And what you see is that there are wholesale markets in gold. And so if you want to actually move a ton of gold, you need to go there, usually, especially if you are going to do it on a regular basis and stuff. So in London, there's the London Bullion Market Association. They only have, I think about seven members or something. And they move the most gold in the world. And when you look at the transaction volumes, they're like, tiny. I don't remember the exact number. I remember looking it up. I think it was like a hundred

transactions a day or something. But every transaction is on average $7 million worth of gold. And so, you know, and there's layers built on top of that. People buy the financial products that are emitted by the members of the London Bullion Market Association or gold miners sell their gold to that organization. And so you can have layers of confidence built on top of that. And the problem with physical gold is that there are hardly any decent audits. So there's a lot of question about like, is all that gold really there? Is it not fractional? But you don't have that problem with Bitcoin. You can always monitor the Bitcoin blockchain. I understand your guess's argument. I would say that gold has somewhat of a different, is positioned differently

in the financial system as it has been a historical value for. for millennia, whereas Bitcoin is relatively new. And so Bitcoin's value being inherited to the fact that it's only a store of value, that may be true for gold. You may be able to say, OK, gold can be a store of value in itself, and even if we're not using it as for payments every day. But I think that in order for that to happen with Bitcoin, the store of value aspect of it in itself is not enough for for the price of Bitcoin to be,

to go to these heights that people have been predicting, you know, $2,000, $20,000 or whatever. So I don't agree with that. I think if you had a lot of people who wanted to treat it as a store of value, then the price could go super high. I mean, look at gold. I think the problem with Bitcoin more is the security model. completely breaks down over time at least if people don't use it a lot because well I think the security model of Bitcoin in the long run doesn't work in any case but but really because the mining

rule goes down and down like at some point it just becomes kind of unsustainable right because miners the revenue for providing network security goes away and if people don't use a lot then transaction fees don't make up for that. Yeah, you do, like, I agree that you do need, um, you need, uh, liquidity and transactions.

Uh, I mean, that feeds into the motivation for people to use Bitcoin as a store of value. Like that, that's kind of, I guess I'm like, you can look at it from different, uh,

perspectives. Um, like part of the reason why you would want to own gold is like if, you know, uh, there's this story. I don't really know if it's true, but it's like,

it circulates among, uh, you know, gold fanatics or whatever gold bugs, that one of the things that was given to British fighter pilots when they were on their mission is some gold coin because after they crashed, it didn't matter where in the Sahara, they would still be able to, you know, to buy some food or transportation. And that especially historically, wouldn't always be the case

when you just had dollar bills because those could be fake. So the fact that people actually accept it, And you can do transactions with them. And there's evidence of transactions. And then also for the miners, it's important that there are transactions because in the long run, that's what they need. They need the transaction fees. And so that's probably why these side chains and stuff are going to be helpful

in kind of securing the long-term future of Bitcoin because high-volume transactions, they can then some small fee can be charged on that. And then the miners can also profit of that. So I agree that it's not just exactly one or the other. So since you started recommending Bitcoin, it's a long time, a lot of time has passed, right? The world is a different world. Bitcoin has changed a lot.

The cryptocurrency, the blockchain community has evolved enormously. So how do you look at the community and Bitcoin today? How would you describe the state of Bitcoin? and are there any sort of objective metrics that you follow and have been following over time to kind of say, okay, how is Bitcoin doing? Well, when you look at the amount of value that is being moved on chain, in terms of dollars, right?

The dollar denominator value that's being moved on the Bitcoin blockchain is the highest ever. I don't know exactly how much it is. I think it's about $50 billion a year or something. So from that point of view, Bitcoin is extremely healthy. When you look at Bitcoin from a security point of view, there are no major concerns.

Like all the, you know, all the, there is a heart fork kind of proposal that is in the works, but that's more to kind of fulfill the promises. I think Peter Todd is working on that. No, actually Luke Jr., I think. But there's a very small chance that the hard fork is actually going to happen. So security-wise, Bitcoin is extremely healthy, I think. Also, if you look at the hash rate,

it's basically on its course to triple again compared to last year, which means that the firewall around Bitcoin is just getting stronger and stronger. And so eventually we're going to have these commoditized mining chips, and so that will allow more diversification among the miners.

I think the centralization of Bitcoin mining in Bitcoin is overblown. I don't think it's a real issue. 51% attack is, kind of still a possibility but you know because of the the increase in hash rate it's again it becomes harder and harder I think it's going to be more tempting for governments to start accepting taxes in Bitcoin or accepting some form of payment in Bitcoin which is like the love-hate relationship that governments I

think will have with Bitcoin in the future is that you know I hate it because people can you know they can get paid internationally like all kinds of gray black market transactions can happen with this. But then the love is like, oh, well, how about I can tax people. You know, so I want Bitcoin's as maybe even as a reserve asset in the long run. So my main focus is always security. And I think Bitcoin by far is the most secure cryptocurrency there is. And even by its own measures, that's just improving.

And then there's these wonderful technological innovations that are happening with lightning network and side chains. And a lot is happening in terms of fungibility too. So improving the privacy of Bitcoin. A lot of talks about that now in the scaling Bitcoin conference in Milan. So yeah, I'm just more positive than I've ever felt about Bitcoin. Cool. That's great.

I really like your perspective because I think certainly on this podcast we've become more skeptical over time. I think there's a lot of reasons for this. one of them is just how divided the community has become. I think it's been, it's become a very negative, hostile environment, which was completely different in 2013, where there was extremely a lot of optimism, exuberance, activity. So I think that's something that's changed.

It's certainly true that a lot of innovation is happening. And yeah, you're right. I think at this point, Bitcoin is secure. Personally, I think there are some design flaws that could lead to problems down the line, but they're not on the horizon at this point. But I also think a big thing has just been that a lot of activity when it comes to startup activity is not happening on Bitcoin, right? That's happening with Ethereum or with permission blockchains.

I think those are the two areas where a lot of activity is. So, but that being said, of course, you know, it's, it's very exciting. And a lot of the technological projects that we are seeing, they were there, right, with lightning network, segregated witness, et cetera. And we just, we haven't really seen the effects of that. So it's nice to have somebody who has the full on, um, a different perspective and sees more, weighs more the positive sides than the, the things that aren't going so well.

Yeah, I mean, when you talk about the startups, yeah, it's definitely true. Although, like, even back in 2012-13, there were a lot of, like, startups who, I guess, back then, transaction fees were not an issue. So you could build, you know, a gambling website, and you just do it all on chain, like, like, Satoshi dice, or you could have a stock market that kind of operated on the Bitcoin blockchain. But then over time, people kind of started seeing that, oh, there's transaction fees, so we can't just, you know, put all these transactions on the network. And then it took, you know, sidechains was an idea, but it takes, it just takes a long time to make that leap. And so people have, like,

segueed into focusing on altcoins, which already, I mean, back in 2013 was already pretty, you know, a lot of activity was there. And then also, yeah, you're right, Ethereum, which is also an altcoin, and then, you know, trying to build on top of that, because it's more accessible. I think it's true. There's, you know, as far as applications go, there is more activity in the alt-coin space than there isn't Bitcoin. I think it's because Bitcoin is harder. And my contention is that Bitcoin is more robust and it will scale better in the long run because it has these layers and doesn't try to do everything on the main chain. And so I think that this startup activity is going to return to Bitcoin in part because that's where the most money is and that's where the network effect is the stronger. and because it's the most secure network.

If you want to help people store value or move value, then I think the minimum requirement is that you offer the best security possible. I'm not sure I would agree with the idea that the startup activity is going to return to Bitcoin. I don't think, Brian, what your thoughts are on this, but we both work in startups that deal in the blockchain space and all of the demand today is coming from enterprise who want to implement blockchain technologies. And for the most part, using permission blockchains as a way to upgrade existing infrastructure that is, you know, just like in a dinosaur era. What do you feel about that?

Yeah, I think that's great. And I think that it's possible that that demand is not going to weaken. saying that all the entrepreneurs that are now, you know, building permission blockchains are going to, you know, move back to Bitcoin. What I think is that, what if Bitcoin goes from $10 billion to $100 billion? Then all of a sudden there's $100 billion worth of savings that wants services. I want to send my Bitcoin to India and I want that money to be deposited on a bank account somewhere.

Or I want to, you know, to do an... an IPO on a side chain. Like, help me do that. Like, there's all this money now in Bitcoin. Like, help us do that. And I don't think that money has to be siffing away from, from, you know, other blockchain projects. I think it's possible, but I don't really think that needs to happen at all.

So I don't know if that makes sense. Like, I don't necessarily think that the blockchain space would shrink a lot. Although I do think there's maybe some, you know, some overzealousness in terms of what, you know, what private blockchains actually can achieve. but yeah I think that both can totally coexist and in a way I feel like you know the private chains and maybe you're not just talking about private chains

correct me if I'm wrong but I think permission blockchains is kind of like talking about intranet solutions back you know back in the day it's like oh well let's improve office infrastructure and like kind of improve the way we communicate between these companies and I think that has its place

and I think they totally can coexist Today's magic word is investment, I-N-V-E-S-T-M-E-N-T. Head over to let's-talk-Bitcoin.com to sign in, enter the magic word, and claim your part of the listener reward. You wrote this really great article back in 2014 on CoinDest entitled, Why Bitcoin is the Petroleum of our time, which at least for one reminds us how cruelly we treat animals, or have always treated animals. And so in this article, you compare Bitcoin to the transition from the whale oil economy to the petroleum oil economy and explain that Bitcoin is to the current financial system, what petroleum was to the whale oil industry back in the 19th century.

And although I agree that there are similarities there, I think there's one specific characteristic that is different from that transition in those technologies is that the rails on which that industry was basing itself on, that is the lamp, was the same. So, you know, if you had an oil lamp, you could, or any type of apparatus that burned oil oil as a source of heat or energy, you would simply need to put this new type of oil like kerosene in this apparatus and it would work. So the underlying infrastructure was the same. Whereas with the financial system, that is not the case. And I think that that is one of the major reasons why we haven't seen this mass adoption of Bitcoin as people were predicting back two years ago when we first met. I mean, back then, there was so much enthusiasm about, you know, Bitcoin will be like massively adopted next year and two years from now. The price, you know, people making like outrageous price predictions, which we all sort of believe, I guess. But I think that that fundamental difference, the fact that you can't simply go from the existing financial system that is so ingrained in our society, in our culture, and our politics and just the world economy and just say, like, okay, now I want to use Bitcoin in that same system, that's a major flaw.

And I think will be, will continue to be a huge burden on Bitcoin as something that can be massively adopted by just anyone. Yeah, I think that's a great point. I think it's true that, you know, like, well, back with petroleum, what did need to happen was you needed to distill it in some way. You couldn't just use the crude oil. You had to, you know, make, like you say, you have to make the kerosene and then maybe also redesign some of the lamps. But there was like no regulation almost whatsoever. There's a good movie about the early oil era. And so there was some adjustment that needed to happen, but there was virtually no regulation whatsoever.

and also the whales were already dying. I mean, in the sense that the population was declining, so the price was high. And then there was all these new applications for petroleum that were kind of adding to the appeal. So yeah, I agree that the adoption there was easier than for Bitcoin, especially. I mean, money is really, it's almost, there is almost like a religious element to it too. Like, it's almost like blasphemy to advocate the use of a number. other type of money than the national currency, because that's what you used to pay your taxes with, and that's how you get your subsidies and how you pay your workers and all that.

So there's that. Then there's the fact that, boy, with Bitcoin, you, until very recently, I mean, until even on-chain transactions is only seven per second. So even if the whole world wanted to use it, they would all have to use these clunky Bitcoin exchanges that would then get robbed. And so there's a lot more bottlenecks for Bitcoin to actually scale. scale, which I think was why it's taking a longer time. And then there's also these psychological barriers that are just, I mean, yeah, who cares what your, you know, oil lamp is made of? But

if you have to explain to your aunt or grandmother that your savings are now in Bitcoin, which I don't recommend that all your savings are in Bitcoin, but it's just like, it can be a weird conversation. You know, maybe it's like, she'll be like, oh, well, you use it to buy drugs. Like, why do you have Bitcoins? So I think there's more controversy there. And like you say, the rails, just way more effort is needed to develop the infrastructure. Like, I mean, look at how long it took for the internet to take off. It was, you know, it was decades. The early peer-to-peer protocols were developed.

And then I think it took about 20 years for it to go mainstream. So to come to your question, Sebastian, your point about, you know, startups and into Bitcoin and sort of case for Bitcoin. I think right now I don't see any signs of an increased number of startups building on Bitcoin, if anything, it's decreasing. Mind you, I say that, but the company that I work for and co-founded, we actually do stuff on Bitcoin. Yeah. We use Bitcoin, like it's in our API. But we're one of the few startups that do that, or at least in the sort of permission blockchain space. Yeah, so some do and some will continue to do.

But I also think tourist point is very valid, right? Because fundamentally, it is, if you look at this technology, if you look at blockchain, blockchains, and then one of the very obvious use cases and uses of it, and I think that is something that will have really a future is the idea of exactly what Bitcoin is trying to do. It's a native digital asset that you can use for payments and for, for a store value. And if you look at that, then what's important for that to succeed? So network effects are very important.

It's important to have a sort of history and the trust behind it. And just that Bitcoin has been around for a long time is certainly a longish time. It's certainly a strong factor there. So if you ask me today, what has the best chance of being that kind of asset? also a non-governmental controlled asset. That's not to say that there won't also be government-issued cryptocurrencies and all. I think there's a role for that too. But at the same time, there will be a demand for a non-government-controlled asset.

And then if you ask me, like, what has the best chance of making that? I would still say that's Bitcoin at this point. And if that is going to go that way, then there will be opportunity to be a opportunity to build various startups around that. So I totally, I see new thesis. I think it's a, it is, I totally abide out. It's just, I guess we don't know how likely it's, it's going to be that. It happens, but it's totally plausible and not unlikely, I think.

What are the use cases too that we failed to mention here and that we often forget with Bitcoin? And I think like on the enterprise side at least, it will, is. demanded and will continue to be demanded is the fact that you can have a digital secure immutable registry of historical facts, which is notarization. And at the moment, Bitcoin is the only trusted public decentralized network that allows you to have really good notarization for really cheap. And until another network comes along and makes it easier, cheaper, and more scalable,

which I don't see any real contenders right now, I think Bitcoin will continue to have this as a really good use case for Enterprise to keep using it. And since Enterprise will use it, then that gives Bitcoin, I guess, more legitimacy see with these institutions that perhaps on the monetary side, on the Bitcoin as money side, don't support it so much. Right. Yeah, that's really interesting. It's kind of weird how Bitcoin is this tree.

I imagine it like this tree and it has roots that go like into like deep into mortar with the like the dark net, which by the way, dark net markets talk about Bitcoin startups. And there's lots of Bitcoin startups there that nobody talks about, which I don't know that much about, but I do know that the volumes are there and there's lots of activity. So the roots go really deep. And then you have the trunk, which is maybe like Bitcoin has a store of value. And then there's the tree with all the like the fruit that comes off. And part of part of that is I think what you're talking about is like the most trusted

timestamp in the world is, you know, a transaction on the Bitcoin network. There's just there that beats it for now. And so long term, what I hope will happen is that the, the, permission ledgers will kind of touch base every now and then with the Bitcoin blockchain to just use it as a layer of consensus, like just kind of like, all right, this is our hash. We'll dropping it in the main chain just so you know. And then we do a whole bunch of things off chain and then we come back. I think that could be very, very interesting.

And I don't see why not, why you would not sometimes touch base with the main chain of Bitcoin. I agree. And I think that from what I've seen anyway, increasingly enterprise has become more comfortable with this idea. So there's an understanding that you need to have a permissioned system for certain use cases and that, you know, you can anchor down into the Bitcoin blockchain once in a while, as you said, to provide that layer of certification, that layer of independent audit, that layer that layer that. enables independent audibility of whatever you're dealing with on a higher level in your in your infrastructure. And so I think that that gives it, I've definitely seen a sort of a shift in mentality with enterprise, people working enterprise that on Bitcoin and sort of that being a very legitimate use case that, you know, they can see being used within their infrastructure. Yeah, and the fact that, you know, it's something that a lot of people deplore, but it's still the case, the fact that Bitcoin has never had a heart for, kind of like it should validate that thesis that, oh, well, yeah, this is kind of an immutable blockchain.

And so we can't trust it with a timestamp. It won't be, you know, it won't be changed or reversed. And it's proof of work, which means that it's incredibly hard. It's like basically impossible to change anything past that's happened more than an hour ago. Let's take a short break and talk about hi.combe. High.m. is a VPN provider. And if you don't know yet why you should need a VPN provider, let us help you. I'm sure you were like me and when all the crazy revelations came out during the Snowden time

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which we've also talked about it on the show. We've had Zuka on and it's certainly a very interesting project. And then there's a whole lot of others that, you know, some of them are interesting, some of them are not, but a lot of them get attention. So what's, what is your view on those projects? Do you view them as interesting investment opportunities as well? How do you evaluate those? And how do you compare them with Bitcoin? Yeah, so usually with old coins, I see them as like interesting kind of trade opportunities in the short to medium term. I haven't found an alt coin that I really would want to stick with for the long run. Like as of now, so I had a small long position in Monero.

I sold pretty, like when it was like $300 million market cap, so pretty much at the top. And then Zcash, I do plan to buy some. I have some light coins still. I have a short position in Bitcoin versus Ethereum. So if Ethereum is stagnating and Bitcoin goes up, then that will be profitable. So that's kind of my view is that I think there can be, like, for example, with privacy, I think altcoins can complement Bitcoin because for now, even though there's a lot of interesting work happening, because coin join, for example, is, I think, a bit expensive because of the transaction

fees. So if you have a younger alt coin that is focused on privacy like Minero, there might be some value there. And then there's Zcash as well. But I think there was, there's, you know, privacy will be implemented in a side chain probably or in some other way in Bitcoin. There's a lot of avenues there. And then as far as smart contracts go, I don't see, you know, I have trouble seeing how computing the actual contract on a blockchain is, long-term viable and useful. I think you want to validate contracts on a blockchain but not compute them.

So that's part of why I'm bearish on Ethereum. The main reason is I think there's a lot of security issues that are kind of baked into the system because of the design choices they made. So I don't know, that's maybe in a nutshell. I think Zcash is really interesting because the technology has been around for quite a while. zero coin at the time back in 2013 was a concept and so they kept they kind of took the longer term

approach which I appreciate I think the main concern there is that first of all it's a separate chain so they have kind of the network effect of Bitcoin to compete against and then the other one is that the transactions are bigger so they require more space on the blockchain it used to be I think about 50 kilobytes now they managed the minimum I think is about five kilograms bytes, which is great. But the question is, like, are users going to, you know, are they going to be okay with a pretty fast-growing blockchain versus the Bitcoin one, for example? Well, with Zcash, and this is what we were discussing earlier before the show, is that, I mean,

although there are some use cases, I think, for privacy as a public network, you know, we have a lot of that now. I mean, there's, you mentioned coin join. There are other blockchains that provide privacy. And once you have Bitcoin, I mean, if you want to just like trade that for like coin on shape shift and then back into another currency and then back into Bitcoin, there's, it's very hard after for someone to trace, uh, the flow of those transactions. With with with Zcash increasingly where I see potential use cases is, uh, as a, as a permission network. So as a way to trade assets, for instance, so one could imagine some sort of an exchange built on Zcash where perhaps you need to have KYC on the individual addresses, but you want those transactions to be private. Interesting.

Yeah, I hadn't thought of that. I'll think about it more. And so what about app coins and the crowd sales? Is that something you're watching as well and you find interesting? well I mean that's like the problem there is that they're fighting this enormous wall of the network effect like why would you buy the coin oh well it's because it's part of our company or because it's the asset that you need to like you know vote vote here or to gamble or whatever so in a way it's kind of like corporate credit or in or some form of of equity and I just it's like, why not launch as a side chain? Well, it's hard to develop a side chain. It's like, all right, well, maybe that's saying something about the quality of your team if you can't do that.

So, yeah, like, I have not seen things that I'm like really, and I don't think like I'm dogmatically opposed to anything that's not Bitcoin. Like, I really, yeah, I really don't think so. It's just, I think, and also sometimes I'm suspicious that it's just a quick money grab. these plans are just very thin and you know just a lot of projects have failed and it's kind of sad because a lot of people come into Bitcoin

or the crypto space and they're new and they see these projects and they can totally see it like oh I can totally imagine this decentralized exchange or you know this project or but they don't realize it has been tried in Bitcoin before like it in 2012 or 2013

so a lot of these half-baked ideas they just come back and try to like entice a new generation. Sometimes it makes me mad that it's like, well, you know, you know, it takes a lot of effort to debunk some of these things to really look at the technology and kind of show that, hey, this is not sustainable long term. And so a lot of people don't bother because they have their own lives and their own projects. And then, you know, people get suckered in.

There's like they don't really know the kind of arguments. They're new to the space. So it's kind of the pink sheets, right? Am I against pink sheets? which is like platforms for penny stocks. That's what pink sheets are. And it has a very low barrier of entry. You can very easily do it.

You know, lots of fraud is happening there. I'm not against the concept. You know, some of these companies do become viable over term, over the long term, which I suspect, you know, the cryptocurrency crowd sales are probably also going to yield some interesting results. Like, in a way, Tesla is doing crowd sale as well. It's not like it's, you know, it's a bad thing. But there's a lot of just nasty stuff that I don't like and looking at individual projects.

And the thing is, sometimes it's just my suspicion. I don't know until it implodes. And then, you know, we can pick up the pieces and we know what happened. Yeah, no, I'm totally in agreement with you. I think the concept is strong. But at the same time, it's been just too easy to raise money with these crowdsales. So we've seen a lot of very bad projects. Yeah, like, for example, Rep, sorry, talking about Auger, market cap is $72 million now.

Is that really, is that project worth that much? Like, building on top of Ethereum, which is now under attack. And, like, I'm just saying, like, I'm not saying it's impossible, but just on the face of it, that seems high. That seems really high to me. Yeah, I'm 100% in agreement with, actually. That's, Auger is something I've looked at quite a lot. I've thought about, and I felt like it doesn't. really makes sense to me how they built it. And it's interesting because then I was like in the

crowd sale. It was like, should I participate in that? I was like, no, I don't think that's going to work. And it's tempting because you know it's probably going to go up in the beginning. Right. And now you look at it and now it's going up insanely. And it's not like that any of the concerns I had have been addressed or unvaled anymore. I still think they're valid. We don't know. Maybe maybe they're right. Maybe they're going to solve it all. But it's still very fundamentally, um, urban, but then it's worth an insane amount, which is if you look at what does a startup have to do in order to raise venture capital at those kind of valuations, they have to be at a very, very different point than some of these projects. So I, you're totally right. The whole crowd sale

thing has gotten a little bit irrational. And I mean, part of it is that, and I know that, I know for a fact. I mean, I've heard that say literally, part of it is that some people feel they've missed out on Bitcoin on the big, you know, the big rally and they want to, they want to, um, they want to um, uh, have, draw, right the next wave. And I think that's too bad because there is probably going to be a next big rally in Bitcoin. And if they are all like spread out in in reps and in all these other alt coins, I think they're going to miss out. That's, I think that's too bad. I think Bitcoin, as far as investing goes, I think there's a huge amount of value that is not being expressed now in market cap.

That I think is probably going to come closer to it in the next two years. I think we're going to see a big, big rally. Actually, that's a good point bringing us to that. So you're one of the people who have made predictions about price at various times. Many people in the space don't do that. What's your view right now? what do you see over the next six months and over the next few years? Yeah, like maybe first, like as far as like what I have done in the past,

like I've always said that I thought Bitcoin was going to go up. And then I did become bearish in like January 2014, which is when it was $1,000. I thought it was a double top and it would go down. And it did go down. I did make the mistake that I thought that it was going to be a similar period of going down. as the two previous times, which it wasn't. It was a lot longer this time.

So that I misinterpreted, I think mainly how much, what would happen when the miners would start selling their coins. And then also I underestimated the amount of fraud that was happening in Mount Gox and how the markets were actually artificially high. But I mean, after I realized that, it was like around Bitcoin being like 500, 400, I did think that we could go down below 300 and hit 200 and we did. And I've been bullish since Bitcoin was $300 again, that it would go up again. So we're double now.

So we're already in a rally. It's 600 now. For me, the main thing that I look at is sentiment. I don't really think like, oh, well, Bitcoin is going to hit $2,000 or $5,000. Because once it goes up, it's like it can go to $2,000 or $5,000. 5,000 or even 10,000 in one big rally. Like, it's just, when things go insane, they go insane. Like, it just happens.

Like, how could you predict how high the NASDAQ was going to go back in 1999-2000? So I do think we will have some type of mania situation. And so then I mainly look at the sentiment and then how, how, if you have stories of people saying, like, I'm putting all my life savings in Bitcoin, or look at my fancy Bitcoin tattoo, you know, that kind of stuff starts coming up, then it's probably time to diversify out of Bitcoin again. And we're not seeing that now. I think the sentiment is very tepid and not. There's not a lot of excitement about Bitcoin at this point.

So you're saying that if I see a guy with a Bitcoin tattoo, I should sell. Yeah, which I mean, that's what back in late 2013, like, I was like, I saw this guy who was boasting and he had done it the day before. And it was on Twitter. and I retweeted saying, like, we're probably close to the top. And that was on Bitcoin was like, it was like literally a week away from the top. It was so close. So, yeah, I mean, it sounds silly.

But, yeah, when people start doing things that you wonder, like, kind of like back in, you know, talk to people who are there at the NASDAQ bubble, you know, what happened? What were people's mindset like? If it sounds like euphoria and, you know, I think that that's something you want to look out for rather than just look at the price. I mean, of course, you can diversify on the way up. You can just gradually sell some or just stick with it because I think the price in five years is going to be even higher than what it's going to become during this rally. So I always have a hard time taking predictions seriously because I've heard so many people make predictions and they all turned out to be pretty wrong. I mean, I think I remember at that conference where we were at in Berlin a few years ago, there was one guy at the end. I mean, there always used to be one guy at the end and say, so on the panel, like, what do you think the price will be in people making just predictions off the top of their heads?

What are your predictions for the next year, five years, 10 years, if you have any? Yeah, I don't really. I just like, I just, it's going to be higher. It's going to be higher expressed in dollars. It's going to be higher expressed in gold. I think that, you know, these waves are real. So we are going to see, you know, I have to move in waves going forward as well. I think, like, saying, like, $10,000 by 2019 or something is, like, very much not outrageous.

You know, like, once is Cassetta saying eventually a million dollars, yeah, like, it also depends on how low the dollar is going to go. Like, what will you be able to buy with a million dollars 10 years from now? I don't know. Is it going to be a house, a car, a bike, a pencil? Like, you know, it really depends on what the dollar does. that's kind of why I'm really, like, really bullish on Bitcoin and on gold is because, like, Deutsche Bank, for example, I, in a, you probably saw it in my Amsterdam presentation, I had a slide about Deutsche Bank saying that it was massively over levered. There would be problems.

And look at the news now. Like, yes, indeed, Deutsche Bank is, is probably going to be either the biggest bankruptcy or the biggest nationalization in Europe. And there's going to be a lot of fallout from that. The banking system is rotten and people are going to look for a refuge and I think that the SDR from the IMF is not a panacea. It's not going to solve anything. Money printing is going to go forward. Full throttle. Interest rates are not going to be raised significantly because then you just explode the government bond market. So all these reasons are reasons for me to be bullish on Bitcoin and I'm not really excited about this stuff because a lot of things will be disrupted and high inflation is very disruptive for economies. It's not really fun. Even if you have a good, you know,

you make a good living, the crime rises and all those things. But it's probably, I mean, in the long run, it will be for the better because I think we need a more balanced system. We need more balance between public and private assets. And right now, all the money in the world is issued by the governments and they're not responsible. So we need some counterbalance. Yeah, I wanted to come to that topic maybe briefly before we end the show. So you, of course, your thesis, right, is to a significant extent, as you talked about, driven by what we are seeing with just an enormous explosion of debt. And, you know, 2008 is quite a long time ago now, eight years ago.

We certainly seeing some things that aren't doing so well, Deutsche Bank being one example. Do you see, but what's your view here on the time horizon? Do you think Deutsche Bank is, and maybe some other things that we're seeing and are going to happen, that are those outliers? Is this, you know, one event, we'll see other events over the next year. So it's just sort of the beginning or something else, like 2008. Do you have any kind of view on that? what are we speaking about? Do you think this could go on another 10 years of, you know,

quantitative easing and zero percent interest rates? So, yeah, first of all, the nature of the problem, like the nature of the problem is insolvency. We have insolvency. And, you know, in that sense, the way to look at the financial system, from my point of view, is kind of the way you would look at an Enron, or the way you would look at Mount Gox or the way you would look at Bernie Madov's empire, before. it collapsed. You just, you're an insider and you can look at the books and you see that it doesn't make sense and that, you know, probably this is going to, you know, hit the wall at some point. But you don't really know what is going to be the thing that will cause Enron to blow up. You don't

know. There could be many things. It's all like what is going to, and the question for the economy at large is what are people going to realize that they are losing money if it's, it's sitting in the bank. If their savings account, even though it gives them 2% interest rate per year, the inflation is higher, so they're losing money. And what is it going to take for people to realize that they're going to lose money faster every year? Because that is going to cause a run for the doors. That's when people get their money out. And the institutional players in a way are already doing that with Deutsche Bank. They are withdrawing funds and questioning their liquidity. And then Deutsche Bank has emitted assets.

that are stored by other banks who are holding that as collateral. So, I mean, it's been named, I think it was by the IMF, as the bank with the biggest risk of contagion of all the banks in Europe. So we could have a lot of fallout similar to 2008, maybe worse. And what is likely to happen is they're going to paper it all over. They're just going to print money and try to do 2009, 2010 again, to just kind of drown everything in new money. But the debt has already increased world debt.

is now over $100 trillion. That is, that's already 50% more than in 2007. So what's going to happen with the next crisis? They're going to, like, double the debt or triple the debt. So, I don't know. So I know your question is about specifics. I always thought it would last longer than many people thought, but it was hard because when I got involved in 2008,

there was already a crisis. So a lot of people with great urgency were talking. There's this economist who was living in Mexico. and he said, in hindsight, he said, like, you know, the way it went in Mexico in the 80s was it got worse every day, just a little bit worse, just a little bit worse, and then one day it was all over. There was a 50% devaluation, everything was in disarray. There's just one day. And I think it's possible that we will see this, for example, in Japan. Like, things can just happen in one day where there's a big devaluation and then there's panic and the banks close and, you know, so it's hard. It's hard. It's really hard to, but I think in 10 years from now, things will look extremely different from today.

And I think we will see a government bond market crash somewhere in the next five to seven years. And I'm talking government bonds of some major established Western world countries. You mean as they will default or they won't be able to issue new bonds? There will be no buyers. Yeah, like the way it happened in Argentina was that back in 2000, is that the local governments defaulted on their debt, and those bonds were held by the banks.

And so people realized that the banks were actually, you know, had worthless assets on their balance sheet, and so they went to the bank to pull out their money because they didn't trust it anymore. And so I think you've, and also in the USSR, the end there, was, you know, local debt that was basically going belly up. And so, for example, with Brexit in Europe, as things kind of kind of start falling apart,

people don't trust that, you know, Uncle ECB is going to rescue us. And that's when they sell the bonds and you get the bond crashes. So I think it's likely that it's probably going to be more on the local level first, maybe like Detroit or Puerto Rico or places like that. And then the contagion just spreads to larger, you know, larger government entities. Well, we're running pretty late already. But this was extremely interesting to talk with you. It was a pleasure.

I think it will be interesting, especially to kind of come back to this when we see some movement in this direction. Oh, yeah. If you're going to see maybe something also in the economy changing, and then especially if we're going to see effects on Bitcoin coming through that. I mean, really, when I got the interest in Bitcoin originally, I was also, you know, very, very closely following the financial crisis in 2008. And that was a big driver for me to sort of just understand this alternative asset. And a little bit on the back of my mind, this whole time, I've been thinking, like, when is it coming? Because at some point it is. And, well, we're still waiting, but it will be.

Yeah. And I think, like, I mean, the three of us, I think it's fair to say, like, we're millennials. So the chance is very low that we have ever owned any blue chip stocks, for example, or, like, real estate of any significance. So in a way, we're very much not invested in the old financial system. And we just kind of maybe have our degree and, you know, we have some knowledge about coding or some, you know, some practical things that help us make money. But so I think in that sense, we, it's easier for us to access the kind of outside perspective on what's really going on, especially after 2008. I don't know if you agree with that. Yeah, I agree.

And I also agree with you that there's, you know, there's a good chance that this will happen again. And that much has changed since 2008 in terms of. you know, regulation. And if anything, things perhaps are getting worse from some viewpoints. And now with, now we can see similar things happening with that happened with subprimes with car debt in the U.S. We see similar schemes and sort of reinsurance. And so I think that on the one hand, there is a risk for this to happen again. On the other hand, I also think that in some sense, what was the cause of the financial crisis in 2008, or at least one of the major factors, was lost track of risk. And this is where blockchain technologies, and I'm speaking more about

the permission side, can provide some mitigation for that. But that is going to take a long time to put into place and become, you know, commonly accepted and sort of a standard within financial industries, insurance, etc. Yeah, and I think crises could be a catalyst for this. Like, in a way, 2008 was already a catalyst. But if there's a new crisis, people are going to want more transparency and not just like you and me and any consumer, but also on the corporate level, if you want to work together with another company, after there's been a major stock market crash, maybe you want some reassurance. Maybe you do. want to see things that are publicly accessible on a blockchain about that other company.

So I think that, you know, that's just just a thought that I really think that crises can be catalysts for good things too. So before we wrap up, do you want to tell us about Adaman Research and this podcast that you recently launched? Sure, yeah. So Adamant Research is the name for my research activities. I put out a report on how to position for the rally in Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin is actually worth 50% more since I put that out.

So that's the rally I'm talking about. Then I am working on new reports. For now, there is no subscription-based newsletter that is in the works for the long term. And yeah, I did start with a podcast interview to Paul Stortz from Bitcoin Hivemind who's working on a very interesting side chain project. So, yeah, the most of my activities are on Twitter. That's kind of where I announce what I do, and the articles I wrote.

I have a new article that just came out, a two-part article. It's called Why I'm Short Ethereum and Long Bitcoin, which kind of makes the case why I'm bearish on Ethereum. So if you want to check that out, that's on Medium. And I think all those things are going to appear in the notes of this show. Yeah, absolutely. Well, Turo, thanks so much for coming on. It was a pleasure talking to you again. And very interesting to hear your kind of your perspectives. And hopefully we'll revisit these topics at some point in the future. Yeah, you're very welcome. Thanks for having me. And yeah, let's revisit, especially as soon as we see some big changes in the world economy.

Absolutely. Okay, thanks so much, Turo. So also, thanks to our listeners. We are part of the Let's Talk Bitcoin Network. you find this show and other shows on let's talk bitcoin.com. And of course, we put out new episodes every Monday and you can subscribe to it on your favorite podcast app or watch videos also on YouTube.com slash episode of Bitcoin. So thanks so much and we look forward to being back next week.