Stuff You Should Know - How Bitcoin Works

Episode Date: June 18, 2013

In 2008 Bitcoin, the world's first decentralized, anarchistic all-digital currency, was introduced to the world. Its value has risen, fallen and risen again and speculators, techies, libertarians and economists alike are taking it seriously. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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See terms and learn more at discover.com slash online privacy protection. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know. From house.works.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And this is Stuff You Should Know. The podcast.

The tech edition. Which we don't dive into tech too much because that's... This is Jay Strick and Lauren's territory. And frankly, we're a little scared of them. Our cohorts at Tech Stuff. They do a great job. Sure. But we've gotten so many requests for this topic that we were like,

we got to satisfy the Stuff You Should Know fans. We don't want them showing up with torches led by Mo the bartender at our door. Exactly. You know, this might be the most requested of all time, possibly. Oh, you think? I think it might be. I can't think of another one that comes to mind that was maybe like Mormonism.

Yeah, Mormonism. Or Scientology. And I see accents a lot. People want to get to the bottom of accents. That would be a good one. Yeah, we need to do that at some point. Okay. You want to do that now instead?

Crikey. That's good. I could do how bad accents work. Do Italian. No. I'm not to your monkey. That's good stuff. It's not that I think you're my monkey.

I know. I think you do accents way better than me. I'm just a fan, man. No, meaning that I attempt them and do them poorly where you don't even attempt them. I've tried your plant and it is off the charts. It's not bad. So, Chuckers. Yes.

You know much about money? Not much. No? No. I know that I got a few pennies in the bank and that's about it. I know how that works. Okay. Well, we talked about money before.

I mean, where was it that the first currency was? We did a lot of financial stuff. There was something we did recently where we were talking about how Mesopotamia had the first system of, wasn't it like the first coinage? Yeah. In China, of course, too. Yeah. But nowadays, when we think money, here in the U.S. at least, and in Canada, and actually

pretty much the world because the world uses dollars, we think of paper, money, or coins printed by the U.S. Mint at the behest of the U.S. Treasury on behalf of the United States government. Yeah. It's all banks are backed and insured. Clearly, we know that they're covered in case something goes wrong. Yeah, because you and I are covering them, buddy. Yeah, basically.

But it wasn't this system that we take very much for granted now of, you know, one's, five's, ten's, 20's, hundreds, and then there were some other ones. This is fairly new. It was just the beginning of the 20th century that the Federal Reserve was created. Yeah. Before that, during the Civil War era, I think maybe even post-Civil War, there was more than 8,000 different entities, typically banks, that were printing their own currency. Yeah.

Man, we talked about that. What was that? Was that the barter thing? Maybe so. Yeah. But you're right. It's a new thing. It's a great wall to go back to because it's so interesting.

Yeah. 8,000. And like, you know, if you were a bank, you can just be like, hey, I got a bunch of gold here. Right. I'll print some money based on this, and I'm going to put my picture on it, or maybe a picture of my favorite horse. This is a Jim McPherson dollar.

Exactly. See? Anyway, all that went to the wayside when the Federal Reserve came about, and everybody was like, eh, eh, eh, stop. Right. Just the federal government can print money from now on, and we're going to back it with gold. And then, you know what?

We're not going to back it with gold anymore. Let's just say, you guys believe this has value, we'll go with that. Well, at that point, everyone had bought in, literally and figuratively, so. Exactly. So we went from the gold standard to a fiat currency, which is everybody come make believe that this actually has value, and it actually will have value. It's pretty magic. Yeah.

And that transition to a fiat currency gave birth to what we're going to talk to today, or the possibility of what we're going to talk about today, which is Bitcoin. Yeah. Which is the real thing right now. It's, you know, will it survive? Who knows? But as of the recording of this podcast, it is super legit and what, about a billion dollars?

It may, in fact, be too legit to quit. Maybe. I didn't see an estimated value of all the bitcoins in circulation. I saw that, but it, as we will find out, it fluctuates like on a minute to minute basis. Yeah, it really does. So it might be worth like 25 cents next week. Yeah. But like you said, though, the whole thing hasn't crashed.

It may be what we're seeing is a bubble and then another bubble and they just bubbles bursting. Right. But the system hasn't crashed. And that's because the system, the theory behind it, and the practice, it turns out, is extremely sound. Yeah. And what's even more awesome about Bitcoin, which is, we should say, the world's first digital, entirely digital, decentralized currency, is that it has a great origin story.

It's shrouded in mystery. No one knows who created it. And the things that it's used for can be shady and weird, and it's all just very, you know, some of it's on the deep web and it's just very interesting and like salacious. And it's very anarchistic in nature. It's, there's no, not only is it not backed by any government, it's not issued by any central authority. Yeah.

It's part, if you're part of the Bitcoin network, then you are part of this, the authority to issue it. Yeah. And it's actually too, technically it's mathematics that has the authority to issue Bitcoins. Yeah. It took me a while to wrap my head around it because it's such an entirely new thing. And it's very complex. Yeah.

And well, although it really isn't, like when you break it down, that's what I had to eventually figure out. I studied it and I was like, oh, wait, this is actually kind of simple. And at the root of it all, as who wrote this? Did Strickland write this? No, this is Nathan Chandler. Chandler points out at the root of it all basically, all that you have to do to invent a currency is have enough people say, this is currency.

And then you have currency, like I said, whether it sticks around, who knows. But as of now, there are enough people buying and selling Bitcoins and speculating and using Bitcoins as trade, then it's a thing. That's the other thing that gives it value is if there's somebody out there who's willing to accept that currency for a pizza, then it has the value of a pizza at least. So let's talk about the origin first, huh? Sure. The origin back in 2008, a mysterious pseudonym popped up, Satoshi Nakamoto.

And we don't know if this is a lady or a man or men or women or both. Yep. Could be a group. Who knows? And they or he or she or it published a document that outlined what Bitcoin was, said this is a new thing that we or I or me are trying to create. And I believe that person minted the first 50 coins himself or herself or themselves. Yeah.

That was 2009 in that document that Satoshi published in 2008. It was really groundbreaking because it figured out a longstanding problem that was preventing digital currency from being established, and that was what's to prevent anybody from copying and pasting the code that makes up your digital currency and then using it again and again and again. Yeah. Well, there's one easy way around it. You have a ledger, but you have to have somebody you trust to keep track of the ledger.

And what Satoshi came up with and what Bitcoin does is it makes the ledger entirely public. So that everyone is working out the ledger. Yeah. And it's actually that process of keeping track of the ledger and who has what coin and what coin's been transferred to whom. That actually mints new coins. Yeah. So we need to step back and explain what's going on here.

Okay. Because I think people are already confused. If you don't know what Bitcoin is, you're like, what are these guys talking about? Bitcoin is virtual money that you can now use online to buy and sell things. And there are a number of retailers that are accepting this. It's not just the deep web. We'll get to that in a minute. And now there are even go-between companies that allow you to, I guess they, not transfer,

but they convert your real dollars into Bitcoins to, you know, if you want to shop at like Macy's, let's say. Or they convert your Bitcoins into real dollars. Bitcoins into real dollars. Yeah. The other way around. And Chandler points out a good way to think of Bitcoins is it's a digital stand-in for cash because it's anonymous.

Yeah. Exactly. And that's the big key. So if you want to buy things anonymously or if you are libertarian and you just want to stick it to the government or if you don't trust the government or you don't trust banks, a big thing that Nakamoto preyed on was the financial collapse, obviously, and was basically like, hey, look around, what's going on? Right.

Like you're going to trust your money there? Like why not trust this new thing? Let's give it a try. Let's give it a try. So basically, if there are a couple of different things you can do, you can either participate as just someone who buys Bitcoins with your credit card or whatever and then uses them to shop. Chandler says that you can buy with credit cards, but I saw from a couple of different

sources that like most places do not take credit cards, that you either have to give them your bank account or else figure out a way to pay cash like using MoneyGram. Well that's been the more preferred way as of late, but there's still credit card people that will take a credit card. So the first thing you need to do is set up your wallet and that is basically your account, your digital account, and then you buy Bitcoins and they are in your account and you use them for whoever takes them. Right.

And you buy them from like a central currency exchange, probably Mount Gox. Although we'll talk about them in a minute too. They've been handling about 60% of all Bitcoin transactions or purchases of Bitcoins. You go to Mount Gox typically. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that will piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly.

And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil asset for it.

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Listen to How to Money on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So, like I said, one reason you might want to do this is if you don't trust the banks or you're tired of the government getting involved in your money, or if you just want to save some money because what you're doing is you're skipping middlemen, and so you're saving on a lot of transaction fees. Oh yeah. Have you ever purchased something overseas through PayPal?

No. Not overseas. Oh man. It is expensive. Really? The fees do. Bitcoin has no central authority, and so there's no bank you're dealing with, so you're not going to be charged the bank's fees.

And the transfer companies that do work with Bitcoin typically charge like $2, $3, something like that. Right. So you skip all that. You don't have any fees. The wallet is a software program, so it's not like a literal wallet, obviously. You download your wallet, you've got your little account, you buy your Bitcoins, and you can just do that if you want.

You can just buy things. You can buy things on the regular web. You can buy things on the deep hidden web. You can also just hang on to them and speculate. Well that's the second thing you can do. You can speculate and buy and sell the, apparently, the Winklevoss twins. The Winklevi? The Winklevi from the Facebook movie in real life are, they have like $11 million worth

of Bitcoins. See, I wonder how much it's worth now, or how much it will be worth tomorrow, but yeah, they have millions of dollars worth of Bitcoins. Yes, so they're apparently supposedly Bitcoin millionaires that have made their money speculating by buying and selling just like you would a stock, let's say. Right. So that's another thing you can do. The other thing you can do is actually participate and mine these coins, which is, sounds complex,

but it's really not. All right, well let's get into this because now we're talking about the Bitcoin network, right? Yeah, it's a peer to peer. We should point that out. That's very important. Peer to peer network. Right, like BitTorrent or Skype.

Yeah, there's no centralized like mainframe running this thing. Exactly. The whole thing operates on the computers of the people who are part of Bitcoin network. That's right. Okay. So the mining is really the most important and I think that's where a lot of people get tripped up. There's three things basically that mining coins, you're creating coins essentially.

You are, well, let's get into it. Transactions are released in six, 10 minute blocks. So every 10 minutes, 25 now coins are released into the system. That's the approximate about how long it's been taking computers to figure out this mathematical problem. Now they're released every 10 minutes. Oh, okay. Whether or not they're figured out or not, it might take longer than that.

So okay. Well, then you can explain this to me because I was a little tripped up by this too. So every 10 minutes, the computer that happens to be working on the math problem and solves it at that 10 minute part gets the coin. So is it random? Well I think we need to step back again and explain what these are. It sounds confusing, but it's not. Every 10 minutes they release what's called a block and a block is essentially a group

of transactions across the Bitcoin network. So it is up to a person, but usually a group of people team up to do this because it requires a lot of computing power to perform, to basically handle these transactions just like American Express pays someone to handle their transactions. Totally got it. I got it. Thank you. This is what was tripping me up.

Yeah. Okay. And then that block is a group of transactions, right? Yep. And this is the transactions form the ledger, like who has what coin, what coin got transferred to what person. Like verifying all that stuff, all that takes money, usually those are the fees you're paying like AMEX to do something like that.

Right. Okay. And this is also encrypted information. Well, yeah, that's the key. So that block is basically a math problem for a computer to work out. And everybody, so every 10 minutes, everybody on the network gets that same block and whoever figures that out first gets the newly minted bitcoins. Gets that reward.

They call it a reward. I got it. That's pretty much it. So here's the thing though. It's a diminishing return at this point. They have it every four years. Every four years, the number of bitcoins that are released per block, they're figuring out a math problem is halved.

So when it started out, it was 50. And now we just reached the four year point 2013 was the beginning of the year. So now it's 25 when you unlock a block. That's right. In 2017, it'll be 1250. So every 10 minutes, they're releasing these coins. So it has two, three functions really. It's A, to satisfy the transactions and get everyone working together as a big group to

make sure the transactions are good. And it keeps the ledger up to date. Keep the ledger up to date. Two, it releases more money into the system and it's carefully planned out. So it's not like it's a very steady rise basically over the years. Right. So like a central bank can't flood the market with more money to devalue what's out there. It's basically by 2140, they know exactly how many coins will be out there and it will

be 21 million on the nose and then that's it. Yeah. It's all controlled. Right. And then the third thing it does is it keeps the system secure. So that's what mining is in each block to it's very energy inefficient. Each block to fully satisfy over the course of 12 months takes about $10,000 worth of electricity.

I read way more than that. I read 150K per block for 24 hours of hardcore data mining or hardcore Bitcoin mining, sorry, costs up to $150,000 in electricity. Oh, really? Yeah. And that, but that's with one of these, there's like certain computers out there that people have set up that are dedicated just to Bitcoin mining because bitcoins hit like 230 bucks a piece, 25 of those puppies, that adds up and if you can get more and more and you have

computers dedicated to it, then people have, they're just Bitcoin miners and they have computer systems or they're parts of co-ops that divide the Bitcoin, right? Well that's kind of the only way to do it now. They say if you're a single user, then you have virtually no chance these days. I would imagine. It just takes too much computing power for that average home computer. Right. And if you team up, even if you've got a great system, if you team up with 10 people with

a great system, then you're 10 times as likely. Because that was the other thing, the number of bitcoins that come out are halved, right? And the math problem, the encrypted math problem that is released as a block becomes increasingly difficult. Yeah. They want it to be hard. Right. That's the whole point.

There was an article, I don't know if you've read this that I sent you, that right now you can still make money mining. But it won't be long because it's a diminishing thing before it's going to cost too much in power and hardware to even make it worth your while. So I'm kind of curious how that's going to work out. Yeah. I saw like a computer built specifically to mine bitcoins started about six grand on eBay.

Yeah. And that's like, again, the electricity involved is just ridiculous. Yeah, plus if you're splitting 25 bitcoins, I mean, that ain't a lot of dough. Right. Well, it depends. Like we'll see. Yeah. So that's it.

That's the network. That's how the Bitcoin network functions. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Cool. And it's beautiful. Think about the elegance of the figuring out a math problem to unlock new coins is

what you're doing to keep the ledger up to date. Right. That's awesome. So like it's providing these three functions all at once. Not only is it an open ledger, they have open source. Right. So their code, if you're a programmer and you know what you're doing, you can actually look at their code and figure it out because it's not like it's not a big deal if you understand

their code. Yeah. It's not like you can hack into them. It's very secure on that side of things, but it can also be not secure as we're learning. Hackers are now getting into like the like you can actually convert your bitcoins into real cash. And those are the places that are susceptible to being hacked at this point, right? Right.

It is. Just one more thing about why it's secure in theory. When that computer figures out that math problem that unlocks that block, what they came up with is shared with every other computer in the network to verify that this ledger is accurate. Oh, and is that a hole? Yeah. That's why it's secure because everybody knows, everybody's computer knows what's what and

if there's a discrepancy, then it has to be worked out. That's why a transfer of bitcoins, a transaction can take a long time because it has to go across all the network. Gotcha for verification. Yeah. All right. Well, that's cool. Okay.

But insecurity. Well, many ways it can be insecure. Like we said, they can hack into like when you go to a, like what's one of the places they listed for converting back to cash? BitSpin is one, I believe, and what was the other one? Was it BitPay? Yes. BitPay and BitSpin, they convert your bitcoins into credit or whatever and you can shop anywhere.

Or your local currency, like if you want to cash them out and get your cash back, there are companies that do that and that apparently is where hackers can get in there. Yeah. And they can also get to Mt. Gox, which is the currency exchange, which apparently if you have an account at Mt. Gox, a lot of people are like, oh, well, this is like a bank. It's not like a bank. And whether it's Mt. Gox or whoever, that's a really bad place to actually keep your virtual currency because number one, since it's a decentralized system, anywhere where there's

a bunch of people's stuff parked, that's a target. And since there are fewer targets, that means that people can get better at attacking them. Right. It's a terrible place to keep your bitcoins. And then also, a lot of those places, a lot of those currency exchanges, if they go under, your bitcoins go with them. And that's the thing. And they have.

Your bitcoins are gone. Yeah. They're just gone and you don't have them any longer, which is why if you have a Bitcoin wallet or account, you want a physically removable backup of them somewhere, a flash drive or a removable hard drive away from your computer so that if your computer crashes or Mt. Gox goes under or the Fed swoop in and sees something or frees something, you still have your bitcoins because you've got that account of it on your flash drive. Yeah.

I would back it up two or three times. Yeah, exactly. I did read one account of this guy that lost like 800 of them because his laptop crashed. Oh, my God. But it was early on, so he was like, it was no big deal at the time because there were like 20 cents apiece. Yeah. Can you imagine?

No, I couldn't. So, I mean, that's one of the dangers of it and one of the risks. So let's talk a little bit about this whole speculation thing in the wild ride of Bitcoin because it's like the Wild West out there so early on. It is. And it's gone from 20 cents at the beginning to a high of about $260 per Bitcoin early this year, right? Yeah.

In 2011, it went from $30 in the middle, oh, I'm sorry, in 2010, it was worth a few cents. It rose to $30 in 2011 and then it dropped down toward the end of the year to $2. Like currencies are not supposed to do that. No. And that's one of the big problems is like it careens wildly all over the place because of speculation. Yeah. Some people are attracted to that though.

Yeah. Like the cowboys are into that like get rich really quick and get out. Right. But if you're the average person like buying some Bitcoins because you really, you know, leave in the anarchistic sentiment behind it, then you're really at the whim of speculators who can gain the system fairly easily because they're the only ones who know how to do it because the community is small enough. Well, and a lot of financial gurus say it's a sucker's bet.

And it's just a bubble maker basically is one way to look at it, at least for now because it's too unstable. It's like the Lawrence Welk show out there. Half of our fans are going, huh? So the deep web we've mentioned, a lot of people don't know this. I know Matt Frederick of stuff they don't want, you know, like three years ago came up to me. It was like, dude, check this out.

Yeah. The Silk Road. Yeah. And the deep web is a web that's not accessible. You can't go to Google and type in deep web and say, now I'm on the deep web. You have to have like special software to take you to this deep web. Yeah. Tor.

Yeah. Tor. Yeah. And that's where bad things go. I think it's like an operating system that allows you to be entirely anonymous. Right. And yeah, if you don't have Tor, I don't think you can even get onto Silk Road. But if you did, that'd be a really bad decision because Silk Road is where you go buy, well,

drugs. Yeah. Pretty much anything. I think out of the 30,000 things they offered, roughly 20,000 of them were drugs. Yeah. And this is like, there's some dude in Chicago who's got a bunch of heroin for sale and you go use your bitcoins on Silk Road to buy heroin and he mails it to you and your bitcoins are put into an escrow account.

Yeah. And then when you say, oh yeah, I got my heroin, thanks man. I just came out of like an eight day stupor that the escrow account releases the bitcoins to the guy in Chicago and that is going on right now. Yeah. But now that guy has a little addendum that says, would you mind releasing before you do all the heroin? Exactly.

Yeah. Don't forget. Right. But it's a thing. Whenever you want, there are services that you can hire hit men. Yeah. This really troubles me. And kidnappers and people to like rob someone's house or burn down your house for insurance

money. Like that can hire someone. That's called the black market reloaded. Is that site? Yeah. And then there's another one called the Armory, which is apparently like an arms marketplace. And all of this stuff would not be possible were it not for Bitcoin. And you can understand that this is really kind of gathered the attention of the feds.

Yeah. Well, it's attracted more than the feds. The Silk Road actually as of about a week ago was shut down by a unidentified hacker basically, a blackmailer named Lance G threatened to crash the site with a, it's called a DDOS. Distributed Denial of Service. This is, I think they basically flood your site so much that it's inoperable. Right. It just crashes.

Right. So Lance G, whoever that is threatened to crash the site unless they paid $5,000, which everyone was like, that's a really weird small amount. And so they're thinking it might be either some like not someone that's interested in money, but someone that just wants to see it taken down. And some people speculate that the US government is actually behind that. Well, you know, some people actually speculate that the US government is behind Bitcoin as well.

Oh, really? Either it's some genius economist, some genius mathematician, maybe somebody who works for the government, right? Or it's actually like a government project. That's one of the things. There's a really, really great article called the rise and fall of Bitcoin. Yeah. It was from Buzzfeed, I believe, or Wired, one of the two.

And was it Wired? And it's just amazing. It's like a nice long form article that'll take you a little while to read. And it's from 2011. So like it's a little out of date, like the big bubble hadn't happened yet. Right. But I mean, it talks a lot about Satoshi Nakamoto and like who he is or who he could be and all the wild theories running around.

But it also gives you a really good explainer of Bitcoin and how it operates. And Nakamoto supposedly got out to, if you believe the story they tell you, he's not like sitting on some pedestal getting rich. Probably he created this and then said, now it is yours and got out. Right. But who knows? I have to get back to this PsyOps thing that we're working on in the Pentagon. So as of now, the Silk Road is shut down.

I'm sure it will pop back up or something like it will pretty soon. You know? So the hacker just basically crashed the site or disabled it? I think threatened to or maybe did. I'll have to look into that. Yeah. That's what really happened. And there was a DDoS attack on Mount Gox as well.

Yeah. And you know, the problem is when you don't have anything backing your currency, the value of Bitcoin is plummeted when that happened because 60% of your transactions were halted. Right. Which is, this is one of the games that a speculator who's very, I guess, hacker savvy or is a hacker, let's call it that. Yeah. So the way to manipulate the value of Bitcoin is like attack Mount Gox, let the value plummet

and then go to one of the other exchanges that aren't crashed. Right. And buy a bunch of them there and then just let everything go back to normal and let the value rise once more. It's definitely not stable. No, it isn't. And you were saying that the Silk Road got hit by a hacker. Well, the feds have finally intervened.

A lot of people have been waiting for this because you can buy drugs, you can get around paying taxes, you can hire a murderer, you can do all these things thanks to Bitcoin. And now the Department of Homeland Security, right? Not even the IRS. Yeah. The DHS froze Mount Gox's, the parent company's accounts. Yesterday. Yeah.

Right. So maybe a good idea of how things are not stable on Tuesday, May 14th. That story broke that Mount Gox had been, had been, did they shut them down or did they just put them? They froze some of their accounts and it was so a lot of like the transfer companies, the companies that work with Mount Gox are saying like, we're not doing anything with Mount Gox anymore. So if you want to make some purchase or whatever, you're going to have to figure out another

way or use somebody else. So that happened yesterday. Yeah. At the same time, another story was released yesterday that a startup, well, someone who funds startups is investing $350,000 into Bitcoin. They're interested in making it easier to spend Bitcoin currency, they're making security better. They think those are good opportunities basically to make money on.

Yeah. Those are huge problems that this currency has right now. So in the same day, the feds shut down Mount Gox. One company invested $350,000 and yesterday, seeing in money, global risk strategist Ian Brimmer said, predicted the end of Bitcoin. So that just shows you like no one knows. He said, I'll be highly surprised that this is around in 10 years. And what he thinks is going to happen is this is the first one and someone's going to learn

Bitcoin will not be around, but something else will pop up that does it better and that may last. Exactly, like somebody in one of the articles, I think we research said, you know, BitTorrent wasn't the first P2P file sharing network and Skype wasn't the first VOIP network. So Bitcoin may not be the first one, and there's a lot of rivals just waiting to take over if Bitcoin falls, but it seems like the precedent has been established and it's been shown like this can work. Whether or not it'll be allowed to work is a big question because again, the feds can

always step in and shut down whatever they want. If they want to go after Mount Gox, they can do that. Well, yeah, and the big boys are already getting involved. Of course, Amazon now has Amazon coins that you can buy for the Kindle network and spend them like money. So you realize what we're talking about is the same thing that was happening post civil war in the U.S. when 8,000 different banks were issuing currency. That's what we're seeing right now, but in a digital form.

This is the beginning of it. It's crazy. It's the Wild West. It's pretty awesome. Aside from the Hitman BS. I don't think I have anything else. Did you hear people get it? You know the guy from the lead singer of As I Lay Dying, that metal band?

I don't know them. He got set up trying to buy a murder for hire from an undercover detective to murder his ex-wife. Through Bitcoin? No. Or just bag full of cash? Bag full of cash. The old fashioned way.

Right, yeah. Wow. Yeah. That's a tough one to get away with, although maybe people get away with it when you just never hear about it. I hope it's a tough one to get away with. That definitely should be hard to get away with. Yeah, I think the moral of the story is kill someone yourself.

Just kidding. So if you want to know more about Bitcoin, it's pretty interesting and there's a lot of really great writing all over the web about it. I would first go to our beloved How Stuff Works, type that word in the search bar, then maybe start next at Wired. The Economist has a good explainer. Mother Jones has some good stuff on it. Go check it out.

Or check the news feed because literally every day you're going to get some new changing story. Right. I mean by the time this is released, there may not be any Bitcoins in two weeks. Who knows? Yeah. But there will be. Yeah, I hope so.

Yeah. Or else we're going to have to add an ED to how Bitcoin worked. Do you have any? Have you bought any? No. I mean, I'm no fool. I think I said search bar in there somewhere. So that means it's time for a message break, right?

That's right. And then a really good listener mail. The War on Drugs impacts everyone whether or not you take drugs, America's public enemy. Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table.

Without any drugs. Of course. Yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example. Okay. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty.

And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever

you get your podcasts. How's that New Year's resolution coming along? You know, the one you made about paying off your pesky credit card debt and finally starting to save a retirement. Well, you're not alone. If you haven't made progress yet, roughly four in five New Year's resolutions fail within the first month or two. But that doesn't have to be the case for you and your goals.

Our podcast, how to money can help. That's right. We're two best buds who've been at it for more than five years now. And we want to see you achieve your money goals and it's our goal to provide the information and encouragement you need to do it. We keep the show fresh by answering list of questions, interviewing experts and focusing on the relevant financial news that you need to know about. Our show is chock full of the personal finance knowledge that you need with guidance three

times a week. And we talk about debt payoff. If let's say you've had a particularly spend thrift holiday season, we also talk about building up your savings, intelligent investing and growing your income. No matter where you are on your financial journey, how to money's got your back. Millions of listeners have trusted us to help them achieve their financial goals. Ensure that your resolution turns into ongoing progress. Listen to how to money on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your

podcasts. And now Chuck, it's time for Listener Mail. Thank you, sir. This is from Hank, Chris Pinkerton, who has been a fan of our show for you. Yeah. Very beginning. Yeah. And active on our Facebook page.

And a famous detective. And a good guy. He's an ECT, our electroconvulsive therapy podcast that just dropped in real time. Yeah. And he has a story. While in high school guys in Omaha, Nebraska, I met two girls, Gloria and Susan. For about three years, we were inseparable. We would hang out after school, party together.

Gloria and Susan were even closer. And sometimes I was just a third wheel. Another feeling, buddy. Yeah. The girls being a year younger than I stayed in school when I was shipped off to join the Marine Corps or not was shipped off, he chose to go shipped out. Yeah. We lost touch.

But then eventually I moved back to Des Moines, Iowa. And I found Susan living there as well. She informed me that she called Gloria and fill her in on the missed years while I was away. Apparently Gloria had a daughter who passed away under terrible circumstances and became very depressed after the loss of her daughter and actually had to undergo ECT treatment for depression. In your podcast, you stated there's slight memory loss, but in my experience, that is

an understatement. Gloria had no clue who I was, did not remember any of our high school years, gone were the memories of harassing teachers, making out in the auditorium, and memories of working on my car and shop class. Apparently she was pretty good with the wrench. So we got to tell her all over again. Yeah. As it turned out, she had forgotten Susan as well, but not as much as she had forgotten

me because Susan was there for her throughout the treatment and Gloria has been able to recall more memories of her due to this. It's very sad to me that I've lost a friend, not because of intent, but due to a treatment I failed to help her through and failed to understand. That is one regret I will always have and it shames me to think that she has no clue who I am and how important to my life she was. Ever since I vowed to tell people how important they are to me in case they never remember, at least I'll know that I tried to explain that.

And pink, let yourself up buddy. You were in the Marine Corps, you were serving your country, and it was a very unfortunate series of events. And so take that off your shoulders, I say. And Chris goes on to say, enjoy your day guys, smile and have fun, and that is Chris Pinkerton and Des Moines P.S. Could you tell Jill Marie McFadden that she is the love of my life? I think you just did.

Yeah. It's absolutely done. Thanks for the words, Pink. He's always super supportive and like just a nice guy. Yeah, clearly. Yeah. Pink, that's a, wow, if you have a story that you want to tell us, it's almost overwhelmingly depressing.

We want to hear that. You can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast, you can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at discovery.com and join us at our home on the web at stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. With over 100,000 titles to choose from, Audible.com is a leading provider of downloadable digital audiobooks and spoken word entertainment.

Go to audiblepodcast.com slash no stuff, K-N-O-W-S-T-U-F-F to get a free audiobook download of your choice when you sign up today. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting, or are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid for it.

Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your favorite podcast, Therapy for Black Girls, is celebrating five years of empowering conversations as we continue to make mental health and wellness accessible. In addition to weekly chats with some of your favorite mental health professionals and other experts, we've flipped through the pages of your favorite romance novels with author Tia Williams, checked in with Grammy award-winning artist Michelle Williams, and talked hurdles in sports, motherhood, and mental health with Olympic athlete Natasha Hastings.

From our team to your podcast app, join us in celebrating five years of the Therapy for Black Girls podcast. Check it out on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.