Nobody Panic - How to Understand Crypto Currency with Sunil Patel

Episode Date: February 15, 2022

Want to get in on Bitcoin but don’t know what it is? Have no desire to get in on Bitcoin but want to know what everyone’s going on about? Stevie and Tessa talk to comedian, podcaster, actor extraordinaire Sunil Patel who explains what Dogecoin is and what people do with it. Genuinely fascinating business. Follow Sunil on Twitter: @SunilDPatel and Instagram: sunilpatelsolutionsSubscribe to the Nobody Panic Patreon at patreon.com/nobodypanicWant to support Nobody Panic? You can make a one-off donation at https://supporter.acast.com/nobodypanicRecorded and edited by Naomi Parnell for Plosive.Photos by Marco Vittur, jingle by David Dobson.Follow Nobody Panic on Twitter @NobodyPanicPodSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/nobodypanic. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm Carriad. I'm Sarah. And we are the Weirdo's Book Club podcast. We are doing a very special live show as part of the London Podcast Festival. The date is Thursday, 11th of September. The time is 7pm and our special guest is the brilliant Alan Davies. Tickets from kingsplace.com. Single ladies, it's coming to London.

True on Saturday the 13th of September. At the London Podcast Festival. The rumours are true. Saturday the 13th of September. At King's Place. Oh, that sounds like a date to me, Harriet. Welcome to Nobody Panic with me, Stevie and my good friend, Tessa. Hello.

Hi. Hello. We are doing this thing this year where we're like, we haven't actually come up with a really cool, snappy title for it. But basically, we want to talk about more like hobbies, things you can get into that you didn't know you could get into, things that basically we want to get into that we don't understand. And we thought that would make for a good sort of kickstarting of the 2021. 2021 period. As you can see, it's off to a hot numerical start. Terrible start.

Basically, we have a lot of questions about things and we thought we would make it out. Like, obviously we know, but tell the listeners and then we would interview people and get them to explain things to us that we claim we know about what we don't. And today's episode is about that most nose bleeding of topics, most tricky, most confusing.

And it is. Crypto Dogecoin We've got Excellent comedian Actor You're in Borderline With our good friend

Liz Kingsman Yeah Borderline, of course Yeah, years ago But also has a Co-host BBC Towns podcast series But where are you really from It's basically

You pop up in Isn't there's a Viceland Series with Bobby and Harriet Oh yeah Where they got married They get married It's Sonnel Patel Sorry, most importantly, we were both recently in a commercial for the Royal Albert Hall.

I'm so sorry, that was the first thing I've said. That was our charity work for the year, wasn't it? Our pro bono work. It is, of course, comedian actor Salil Patel. He's also a crypto genius. Oh, no. Yeah, straight in with that. Straight in.

Do you know what? I actually started along the same lines as you guys were thinking, we were like, what can I get into as a hobby that might be interesting? And that's exactly how I started doing it in the middle. of the first lockdown. So it's quite recent. It's really recent. Yeah, I just thought, I had so much time on my hands. And I was like, what can I do as a hobby that might eventually earn me some money? And so I went deep down the rabbit hole of crypto, basically. Did you Google, like, hobbies? I think I listened to a podcast, and someone on it was saying that, like, if you're ever presented

with a bet in your life where your money can either go to zero or there's a 50% of it can go to an astronomically high number, you should always take that bet. And then, and that's what, that was what I thought, okay, what is this whole thing then? So that's how I got into it, just from that question. Self-taught? I mean, so is everybody self-taught unless you've created crypto? You can go to university. Should you take that bet?

I think if you take it, I essentially thought, like, okay, if I put in like a little bit of money that I'm not afraid of losing and just see what it's all about. And then that slowly ballooned. Very wise at university. At school used to play the lottery. And everyone was a bit like, well, that's absurd. And they quite wisely were like, yeah, but I'm never, it costs 52 pounds a year, it costs a pound a week.

And I'm, which may be a loss. I mean, will be a loss. But I'll never ever be a millionaire any other route. So I might as well take this, you know, here's at least an option, you know. Plus also the ticket you're buying, like it lets you dream for a week as well. Let's your dream. And this is the thing. At what price the dreams? 52 pounds a year to be quite happy for a bit. It's a dream. Happy in your head for half an hour after you buy it.

I'd pay more than that. I'm going to start doing the national lottery. I remember my mom recently was like, it's just a shame that we've never got anything. You know, we've never won anything in the lottery. And of course, I was like, I don't know, you didn't. She was like, oh, we don't. And that's the sort of, you know, you don't want to regret to you. No, exactly. That's why you got into crypto. I can imagine. You don't want to sit there thinking, I regret not getting into crypto,

which is why we're doing this episode. Well, I think what, so what I did to start off with was, I bought like 200 pounds worth of Bitcoin on one of the biggest exchanges, a big website called Coinbase. You just go on there and buy it. And then I set up a,

and this is probably further than you prepare to go, but I set up an anonymous Twitter account, like a second alternate account, which is locked. I don't tweet from it. And I just followed, Lots of people who talk about cryptocurrency on there. And that was the only way I ever learned about it.

I never went to any websites or anything to like, there's no real education that I've been through apart from like getting involved in this mad community of idiots. I mean, this is already. Okay. The whole is out of the stable. We're talking about coin base. I'm going to have to circle us right back to the start

and start with what is Bitcoin. What is Bitcoin? What is Bitcoin? Well, what is crypto? Let's go even more ridiculous. What's crypto? Crypto has its, well, Bitcoin is the first cryptocurrency. Okay.

So pause. Let's let everyone take it in. Bitcoin is the first crypto. Before Bitcoin not ever heard of crypto, Bitcoin is the first crypto. Yes. Great. Okay. We're ready to go to a party.

All right. And it was set up by, no one knows who this person is or who these. It could have been a group of people, but it's the Satoshi Nakamoto sort of, Have you heard of the origin story? Again, so you're throwing these things away. Oh, you haven't? This is what, I assume this was all in the public. No, that's the thing.

It is, it will be. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The thing is, is that the reason that we're doing this is because we literally know nothing. So normally, you'd get a guest on and you'd research the, but we think it's fun. Okay. To, because I think people listening will be like the same as us. Maybe not. Okay, no, you're right.

You're right. You're right. It's not. Take us there. Take us the origin story. The origin story is that there. an anonymous developer, an anonymous person, or it could have been a group of people, but whatever it was, they were posting on Reddit or whatever forum under the name, Satoshi Nakamoto.

And they invented Bitcoin, actually, essentially, wrote the code that built cryptocurrency and came up with the system that built a cryptocurrency. So cryptocurrency is supposed to be, this is, we're going to have to, it's a decentralized digital currency. So basically, they set it. up in response to the 2008 financial crash. And they, it's philosophically, it's like anti-banks. Mm, love that. Not so much anti-government, but anti-government printing money and being in charge of the

money. And they want the money to be in the hands of the people that use it. That's the philosophy behind it, basically. That's what Bitcoin started out as. So when it started, and this is probably the most stupid question, if I had like some Bitcoin. Could I like go on ASOS and just buy a dress? No, you couldn't. What do I buy with it? Like drugs and assassins?

Yeah, that's the thing. It sort of started out as being like, okay, this could be a currency, but then it's basically turned into what people, it's a store of wealth. That's what people say now. So basically, you buy Bitcoin and you never, ever sell it. And it keeps going up in value because the normal everyday currency, like the pound of the dollar, are going down in value because governments are printing more of it. So it's essentially a replacement for gold Which is what people think is Right can you ever buy it

Is the idea that you'll sell it in the future And make loads of money Or then it's just that you've just got lots of Bitcoin And people are like, why have you got that? Yeah, they could be like, look at my Nauts and ones You're just like sort of smow the dragon He has no use for that goal You know, he doesn't need to go to ASOS

Absolutely but And I do, I do understand that argument But when you look at what, so very rich people never ever sell their assets, they just borrow money against them. So they keep their assets that are worth a lot of money and they borrow money against it at low interest rates. And then they use that money to either buy more assets or spend and then it, yeah, while their main asset goes up in value to pay off the loan. And so that's like the dragon smalg. He's got his gold, but he like, he borrows more gold because he doesn't want to use his gold pile. I mean, yeah.

I just don't think they had those kind of. sophisticated financial instruments in the Hobbit. Well, you haven't seen it. Right, well, there you go. There you go. There's a lot of borrowing against assets. The entire three films are about the stock market in Holton. Thank you.

Hands in the air from the group. So, does Bitcoin have a value to the pound? Yeah. It does. What is it? What is it? It fluctuates wildly. Let's have a look at it today.

Oh. So one Bitcoin is today worth 34,900 pounds. Oh. Oh, got to give me some Bitcoin. Holy shit. What? So that's the interesting thing about it. I'm going to say 34 pounds and I was really like, that's high.

Yeah. So when I started in this, which was like shortly after the first lockdown in March 2020, I think one Bitcoin was about maybe £5,000. So it fluctuates wildly and it has been on a huge rise in the last year. And you never tempted to. just sell it to someone else? I don't actually own any Bitcoin. I own some other cryptocurrencies,

but yeah, I don't own Bitcoin. I don't have any, like, philosophical interest in any of this stuff. It was just a hobby. It was just a hobby, and then it got out of country. Yeah. So, hands up. Hands up, so sorry, much like gold,

which part of its value is there is a finite amount of gold on the planet. We can't, that is the nature of, what those lads that were trying to make gold out of, other stuff. Oh, Alchemists. Thank you so much. We literally can't do it. The gold's the gold. Am I right to say the Bitcoin is the Bitcoin? There ain't no more Bitcoin. There's only 21 million. That's it. Wow. They're mining more and more mining, air quotes. So they use graphics cards to like complete algorithms in order to earn more Bitcoin.

Sorry. Basically, I think the idea was they have to make it hard for you to earn Bitcoin. and in order to do that, they have to convert energy into a store of value. I know that sounds like a ridiculous sentence, but in order to give it some value, I think the idea behind it was that you have to do something for that. And in order to mine Bitcoin, you're actually securing the network by taking a log of all the transactions within the network.

Holy crap. So how the idea of it's outside of the bank, so the bank just put money in it? But then will Bitcoin just, or will crypto just eventually? become like that because they're obviously going to need more and then it's just like oh now they're just coding more you can't you can't change the code of bitcoin to print to make more how can you mine it well mining it's like using these words to describe something which very much isn't I mean like it's so

you can mine it you can do it on your laptop now you can buy a little pro download a little program which will be a bitcoin miner and it basically uses up your processor power in order to complete these algorithms that are needed to keep the network going. So the network has to be kept going by someone recording every single transaction who owns what, who sent who what. And that is split between all the nodes, all the miners and stuff like that. It's all. So the nature of the miners, inverted commas, is that in the nature of the looking for more coins, you're keeping the entire system afloat. So it's a sort of nicely, they did a nice job, these guys. It's not centralized. Yeah. It's for the people, buy the people.

Exactly. No one can, you know, but yeah, that's the thing. So every transaction that you do with Bitcoin, you have to pay a fee to the miners to put the transaction. Is it like, in Willy Wonka, is it like in China Chocolate Factory where Varuka Salt's father has like a factory of people unwrapping those chocolate bars in the hope of finding the gold coin? Yeah, but there's, I suppose there's an upside to it, which is that the used wrappers are essentially keeping the network together. Yes, of course. Okay. Of course. A symbiotic relationship, if you will. Yeah. So we've got some sort of grasp on what one is.

So if someone listening is like, all right, yeah, I'll get involved. How do you get it? What's the first thing you do to like get involved? How do you even go about using it slash buying it, deciding which one to get? Yeah. Okay. That's interesting. So if you really just want to buy a cryptocurrency,

and then just keep it in a wallet and never look at it or look at it maybe in a few years' time, then you buy either Bitcoin or Ethereum, which are the two biggest ones. They still have huge fluctuations compared to like normal investments, but the idea behind them is that they should both keep going up and value because the supply is going down

and you'd assume more and more people will want to buy it as we get on. Because this podcast episode for a moment. This podcast is going to send the price flying. But presumably Bitcoin is currently, retailing at 34,000 pounds. And Ethereum, presumably, is something equally large. Ethereum is, in dollar terms, it's about $4,000. So for the average listener, average Joe, what's a more, you know, a coin on the street

that we might be able to, in the sort of more the £100 market than perhaps the... Well, that's, yeah, that's it. So first of all, you can buy any portion of a Bitcoin or Ethereum. You can buy £100 worth it. you can buy two pounds worth. You can buy any fraction of it. So, but a lot of people look at, maybe when they're first going into crypto,

see, look at a website which sells crypto and think, oh, this one's 2P, I'll buy that. Or this one's 10p a coin. That means I'll get a lot more of them. So usually people come in on the meme coins, so stuff like Doge coin, which you've probably heard of. That's the little Shibu Inu face, yeah. And then there's Shiba Inu coin, which is another one.

Oh, wow. So they inherently have no value. They don't do anything. And there's an almost unlimited supply of them, I think. Why would you ever get that then? Well, that's the thing. This is something that I learned early on is that the more stupid you are,

the more likely you'll earn money in crypto. It's sort of like, because the average person off the street will be like looking at a list of coins and what's this? Oh, that's a dog coin, that's fun. I'll buy that. And just for a laugh. Or it's essentially a casino to people or a lottery, which I think it is to most people involved,

but they like to cover it up with a bit of philosophy. But yeah, so most people will go in for the cheaper coins like that. So if you're going to go in and buy a cheap coin, probably your dog coin is your best bet, simply because lots of other people have heard of it, and they'll go and buy it whenever they get into crypto. And so that will go up in value more? I mean, or it could crash to absolutely nothing.

Right. That's the thing. They're even more volatile because there isn't a community of people that actually believe they're worth anything. It's just watching other people buy it and going, yeah, all right, let's see if that goes up. That's much more gambling, I think, than... So again, is there a finite number of doge coin? I don't think so. Or if there's just...

Because if there's not, then it isn't the opposite of the idea. Why do you do it? If they can keep just printing more doge coin. coin. Well, I don't think there's any... The crypto the philosophy. The thing is there's a lot of... So doge coin... Okay, how many doge coins? There's 130 billion

and the number will continue to rise at a rate of 10,000 per minute forever. See, this is where I've lost my mind because I'm like, as you say, well, you know, you can be quite stupid and make money and like, but it's like, if you went like, oh,

that's a fun dog, I'll buy that. Surely you won't make money out of that. You'd be surprised. They've been Doge-Bron millionaires this year. So it just shoots off occasionally because loads of people buy it. It shoots up at such a velocity. And because it's astonishing. And it shoots up and then it just falls back down.

And to become a millionaire with crypto, do you, when it shoots up, do you then sell it? Or do you just have it? I was supposed to, yeah. Right. Okay. If you don't sell it, you just sit on the roller coaster. you don't want to actually make millionaire in like actual cash terms

like it's actually in your bank to be usable. It's exactly like the stock market of like you need to be on Twitter watching the idiots when everyone's suddenly like dog coin doge, doge, doge, doge, doge, you're like, here it's going up and then you're like, I think this is as high as this mountain's going to get and now I'm cashing out. Well, that's what I thought. But then the metaphor slash imagery of the dragon on the pile of thing from it, earlier where it was like well rich people don't sell they just buy they just borrow against and then tell us

that so i was like so do you never sell and you're just like i've got a million doge coin it doesn't mean it but actually people do cash out so you've got to submit but that would be very difficult wouldn't it because you would never know or maybe it'll keep going up and then suddenly it crashes and you're like i didn't sell so i suppose you've got to maybe have in your head like a well if it gets so this then that's enough for me you know It will haunt you. It will haunt you. There's been people that have been millionaires, billionaires on paper for maybe a few days.

Oh, my God. And then it's gone away. And that's probably the hardest thing. I can already see how addictive it would be. Yeah. It's astonishing simply because there's so many coins. And almost every day or every week, something is making 10 times what it did at the beginning of the week. Things move incredibly fast.

And it has become a down. Definitely like a casino, but with a veneer of respectability in terms of like there's a few charts you can see. It's like, it's an absolute casino. There's loads of scams. There's loads of thieves everywhere. It's an absolute. I mean, it sounds terrifying. It's the Wild West.

And it's like, it's exciting. That's what it is. And it's almost entirely run the value of most of these like alternative coins of which there's thousands. The value of it is almost entirely on the quality of the memes they probably. provide to their community. Oh my God, I quite like that. Yeah, that's what I found so fun about it. It's like just selling it to a community of people that really believe in it

and then they try and get other people to buy it. It's basically pyramid schemes in miniature all the way around, like everyone trying to find the next buyer so they can pump their bags higher so they can sell higher. So that's why it's so important, I suppose, to put in money that you're not terrified about losing because you're not going to lose minus, you're going to just lose that money that you put in. So as long as you do that, you could have like, I mean, I'm definitely going to do it because it's genuinely fun. If I was to do it, so where are the, so you mentioned the community and like the memes and stuff, where would I go to like chat to them and look at the memes?

Oh, you just go on Twitter. Just start following crypto. There's loads of, I mean, I'd be careful. I mean, there's a lot, there's a lot of crypto scammers on there who'll be, who'll be churning out stuff. There might be a few people that you can follow that would be interesting. Like there are the bigger names of bigger followings. But even they, that's the thing. You can be very famous on crypto-twitur, hundreds of thousands of followers and be a verified person, but you can also be scamming people

because none of this is regulated, and no one's going to stop you. How can you tell if you're being scammed? Just time, just letting it happen a couple of times. I know, and it's like, it's almost like you have to be scammed in order to know how not to be scammed in the future. I would stick to the big coins. And there's also like, if you go into it thinking,

okay, this will go up a thousand times, then it's probably a scam unless you prepare to hold onto it for years. And there's a real, there's something interesting behind what they're doing. But there's very few. So in 2017, when we last had a Bitcoin boom, when it went to like $20,000 a coin and everyone was buying it. And then it just crashed to nothing. It was because I think at the time there were no coins,

which actually did anything. They were all promises. They were like, this coin, there was a coin called Denta coin, which was going to transfer on the dental industry, but nobody knew how. And it never really specified how, but people believed in it so much, they pumped into a huge amount and then it collapsed, obviously.

But now there are, and there's an interesting part of cryptocurrency where they're trying to replace the financial system with their own protocols. And so there's parts of it which actually are, they look quite useful. They look like they could have legs and that people, traditional money like banks could invest in them.

So that's what some people would be investing in. That would be the more, you know, that's a more solid thing that they might invest in within cryptocurrency. But to people looking on, it's still a scam. If you follow like two or three big accounts on Twitter that are cryptocurrency tweeters, then fan out from who they interact with or who they recommend that you follow. And then you slowly start learning more about it. But I think honestly the best way is to chuck a few quid at it and just see what happens.

So choose something that you're interested in. So we're ready. We've got our few quid. We've had a little look on Twitter. And we've got it in our hot little pause. Where are we going? What's the platform? What's the best to go? So the biggest one in the world, probably the most reputable, is a company called Coinbase.

If you don't want to go to Coinbase, there's also Gemini, which is actually owned by the Winklevoss Twins, Have you heard of them? They sound like a lot of fun. They were the ones that got... Famously from the hot twins from the social network. That's it, yeah.

They got scammed out of their Facebook allocation, didn't they? Oh. So they went all into Bitcoin. Well, I, the other day, was like, I can't believe those hot twins never worked again. It's like, it's one man, you idiot. Well, after they got their settlement from Mark Zuckerberg, they were in Ibuthra,

holiday and they said they were at a pool party and a man came over and talked to them about Bitcoin and then they were completely sold on it and they went all in and now they're multi-billionaires anyway so they own Gemini that's their exchange suit yeah exactly so just give us a read of the temperature among the crypto community do we because we don't want to be you know stepping on any toes is Gemini are cool cool lads or were it against the Voss, the Winkle bosses? I think Gemini, generally just two thumbs up, good lines. Two thumbs up to those and Coinbase, I'd stick to those too. Okay. Okay. There's plenty more, but they're probably the easiest ones to use. So just to make it a little bit more difficult, these are

centralised exchanges. So there's a central authority that takes your pounds or dollars converts it. And then after that, what you can do is you can take it and send your coins to a decentralized wallet. So that's completely within your control. And this sounds sketchy, but it's usually just a browser extension on Google Chrome. So as it currently stands, my entire net worth in cryptocurrency is on a small browser extension on the corner of Google Chrome. And why would you want to do that? And why is it on the browser? It's on the blockchain, but you're looking at it through the browser. And what's a blockchain? So the blockchain, Jane is the ledger of who owns what.

It's the database of who owns what and where everything is. It's the Magna Carta? It's essentially the Magna Carta. If you could just keep the metaphor, the similes, really. Analogies. Old analogies, thank you so much, Stevie. Real old world for us. It's the Magna Carta, and it's constantly updated, and it never stops being updated.

And every time it gets updated and you want to update something on the Magna Carta, you've got to pay to get it updated. And you pay for those updates, and you pay for those updates, and you pay. for every transaction using the coin you've bought. So, so Ethereum is the big one, which is a big blockchain, slightly different to Bitcoin because you can run software on that that uses Ethereum to power the transactions. So within Ethereum, lots of coins get built on the Ethereum blockchain, lots of alternatives of coins.

So NFTs, for example, which I know you're going to talk to someone else about. NFTs initially started on the Ethereum block, they'd be minted on the Ethereum blockchain. but now they're done on other blockchains. They've been minted on the Ethereum blockchain. And it's as simple as that. I wish I wasn't like this.

I wish I didn't know these words. I'm glad. I'm glad. This is why you're here. I've got just want to circle back to you've taken it your business off the decentralized Gemini.

I'll keep going with that. And you put it onto your browser, your own little browser. So you're completely in control of that. That's your password. Anyone can steal it and then you're lost. So you're completely in control. So what you can do then is you can use decentralized exchanges which have no middleman.

It's essentially a website where you plug in your browser wallet. It connects to that. And you can buy and sell stuff however you want. But you can also be part of the system and become the liquidity provider in the middle, which has become the middleman and start earning fees from people swapping stuff. I, if I may, don't think we're going to be into liquid. I don't think we'll be doing that. But, you can't even grasp Apple wallet on our browser.

I can't use my Apple wallet on my phone. I know. This is what, this is just what people can do once they get deep into it. Because that's what happens. Once you start moving into the decentralized part of it, away from the main exchanges, you start going absolutely, every waking hour is spent trying to understand what you're doing

and where your money is. What's my money? I know. So, okay, just as an aside, you can convert your pounds into dollars or whatever into stable coins, which are crypto dollars, which are pegged to the US dollar. They're called US DEC, US dollar coin. So that will stay. You mean they're tied to it. If the dollar goes up, it goes up.

Exactly, yeah. It will always be one dollar per US dollar coin. Okay. And you can use that to deposit into fair. various protocols where they'll pay you an interest rate of something like 20% a year in dollars. Oh, that's good. That's very high. So if you don't, yeah, it is very high.

And the ins and outs of how they're doing it, they're quite complicated, but it's essentially, if you think about, and this is me being optimistic, but if you think about how banks are lenders and they earn money on their loans that you never get to see as a depositor in your savings, imagine that middleman gone and you're essentially, lending direct to the person with just a bit a line of code stopping them stealing it from you. Basically the whole thing about cryptocurrency is removing the middleman and being decentralized and having no one in charge and just letting you and the other person interact in a trustless way because there's code in the way. So when you go to, so when you're on your browser extension and you're able to lend and borrow without having somebody in the middle taking your business, have you basically become like a sort of bank?

Like, are you loaning to people? Is that what you're doing on there? Do you loan stuff to people? You can do, yeah. Or do you sell stuff to people. Right, because you said like, you know, and then you go in there and then you can do whatever you want to do on that. It's like, yes, well, what are you doing on there? Do you like just, are you constantly, you can't be constantly buying coins?

You must, you, otherwise you have like a million. So you must be, yeah, what is it that you're doing? So if I've got US dollar coins, I'll lock them up in a protocol, which will earn me, you know, something like between 10 and 20% a year interest. Oh, God. on that. But the problem is you can do that, but not everyone does it because there's so much more money to be made, buying random shit coins and waiting for them to go up

a thousand times. Right, I see. It's so insane compared to the real world that it's people's priorities and incentives are completely skewed on it. I think what's been very exciting to learn has been that we've all been quite like, oh my God, I can't grasp it,

it must be for very clever people. But actually being like, oh, it's mad. It's just a clown show And you just get in there And then you sort of cash out your arcade tokens If you like But just accepting people like Oh it's nothing

It's insane It's just a bunch of people Committing to the idea of like Laser Tag Like these are the rules It's it's school being like Let's all play bank I've got these silly coins

Let's play But then at the end of the day One child becomes a millionaire And children have become millionaires So the radio four series we're doing about crypto, we're trying to get a 12-year-old to advise me because they're so good at it. He's made so much money out of NFTs that we're trying to get him to advise us because honestly, I think like, I don't know if you've ever seen the meme of the midwit meme.

Have you ever seen that with the IQ bell curve? Yes, I have seen that. So it's like, you know, on the left-hand side of the curve at the low IQ, someone will say something like, oh, I like dogs, so I'll buy the dog coin. on the middle of the curve, which is where I think most of us are, we'll be like, obviously, I'm not going to buy the dog coin. It makes no sense.

It doesn't mean anything. It's not worth anything. And on the right hand side, the very clever person will be like, oh, well, all the stupid people buy dog coins, so I will as well. So it always returns to the... Always returns to what the stupidest person is doing.

Yes. Because overthinking it without really having all the information means you won't ever do anything. I'm going in, and I'm going to bet on... I'm going to buy dog. I'm going to... And then I'm going to buy two that to have nice names. New Year's Eve, 2017, if I might take you back, somebody I knew

who'd got into Ethereum, and this was like well before it was, you know, such a mainstay. It was really for like the deep, deep bit of Reddit. Was making like 40,000, he was currently, it was at 40,000 pounds. That was how much was. Are we talking about a comedian? Yeah. Yeah, I think we know. That's not named names, but yeah.

But it was, yeah. And he was just in the corner of the party on his phone. And I was like, you need to cash out. Like, it's not, this is, you have to get out. Because he'd put in £1,000 and it was currently at $40,000. And I was like, it doesn't really matter how much higher it goes. You've made $40,000. Like, that's well and above a salary for the year.

Like, you have to tag out. And he didn't. Yeah. And back down it went. And I was like, because it gets so addictive at the top of the mountain because you're like, but how high is this mountain going to go? And I was like, doesn't matter, doesn't matter. So that's why I think you have to go into it.

As with any sort of gambling, because you don't become addicted to the money, you become addicted to that feeling of like how high we're going to go. Lambo's on the moon, lads. You have to go into it being like, this is my number. And the second I hit that number, I'm out. I'm out of the casino. If we were talking about the same person, he actually kept hold of that. So one Ethereum was $1,700 at its peak in 2017.

And at its peak in May this year, it was 4,600. So. He was right. He was right. He was right. Oh shit. All my helpful gamble aware advice was no use here. When the fun stop, stop or just hold on to it.

You were like, hold the line, boys. We are going up. I think if it's what you determine to be fundamentally solid to keep holding it, then you can just keep holding it and see what happens. But there's very few causes. And also to an extent, I would say, and what he was sort of trying to reason with me at the time, was that like if this is a place that I have found joy

like this experience of guessing what's coming next and you know seeing it going up and do it it sort of becomes unrelated to the money I'm happy to just be part of this experience and for it maybe to one day become millions or whatever you know so as long as you aren't doing it if as long as you don't bet the family estate into it and you haven't taken any money that's not yours

and as long as you're only betting within your own means and all of that sort of stuff then yeah go for your life I suppose. Yeah, that's true. Absolutely. If you get too into the Twitter aspect of it and find a community of people that are quite nice on there, you probably will end up quite rich because they get in very early on things and they support each other. And it's a very interesting way that they've managed to make it a welcoming place sometimes. I mean, that's a real positive. Yeah. We can end on. Well, me and Stevie are saddling up the horses and making for the

promised land. I might buy a small coin. Am I? We're doing it. Do it. We're going in. It'll be fun. Watch it every day going up and down. I'll get one.

I'll cash out because it's made like two pounds. I'll be like, well, you'd probably be eating up with the fees, the transaction fees. But, yes. Ah, that's great. Damn it. Okay. Well, look, thank you so much.

Pleasure. It was so helpful. And also, you don't, I didn't say at the start because I didn't know how to even talk about it. But you are doing a series about crypto for the radio. Is this correct? Yeah. So we'll be doing it. we're going to be making it very soon.

We're going to try and look into the different aspects of it that we know nothing about like NFTs or we're going to try and go to El Salvador and figure out why they've decided to use Bitcoin as legal tender. Oh, wow. But yeah, so we're going to go and do lots of these things and that should be out on Radio 4 this summer, I think, hopefully. Amazing. We don't have a title yet.

That's why it's not being said what it is. I think the main thing that I want to tell your audience is that I will have my own cryptocurrency. It's called Sinal Bucks and you should buy it. Wow! What? Within, I mean, I don't know legally if that's allowed, if I can say that or if the BBC guidelines allow me to start a Ponzi scheme. Within the BBC, no.

On this podcast, we're the Wild West. Oh, great, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Sunil Bucks does nothing, but it is available. It will be available by the time the radio show wears anyway. I'll buy it. I'm going to buy it. See, a bit of fun, isn't it, crypto? Bit of fun.

I'm already in. And so now, where can people follow you, please? I have a Twitter, but as you know, I'm not on it that much. I'm on the other one. Instagram, Sunil Patel Solutions is probably where you'll find me. And please do follow us at Nobody Panic Pod. We have, coming up in the next few weeks, we've got Tom Rosenthal coming on and talking about NFTs. I had no idea that they were related to crypto, so I'm so glad we did it this way around.

Otherwise, Tom would have had to explain. explained cryptwriters as well. And it would have been a disaster. So this is great. Thank you so much. And have a lovely, have a lovely day. And we're really,

we're going to look out for Sunil books. I can't wait. With an X. Oh, yeah, of course. An X instead of the S. Yeah. Gross. I love it.

Bye. Thank you so much. Yeah. And see you next week. Bye-bye.