The Joe Rogan Experience - #446 - Andreas Antonopoulos

Episode Date: January 27, 2014

Andreas Antonopoulos is a bitcoin entrepreneur, he also serves on the advisory boards of several bitcoin startups and serves as the Chief Security Officer of Blockchain.

So I love the fact that you can get on the internet and you have a conversation on Twitter with anybody and the word Bitcoin comes up and then this swarm of people from like all these different directions. then this swarm of people from like all these different directions, Andreas Antonopoulos, Bitcoin Jesus. So, you know, I contact you, you contact me. Boom, a week later, we're sitting in front of each other and we're going to talk about Bitcoin. A million people are going to hear about it.

I mean, the internet is fucking beautiful. It's magic. I mean, it's just, it is what it should have, what communication with human beings should have been a long time ago i think it would have all the things that took off and gained ground and gained momentum throughout human history whether it's religion or whether it's cult rituals ritualistic behavior like the all that shit wouldn't have happened if the internet was around the internet

would have went it's not that it's this well stop what are you saying look right here here's here's the studies there's so much misconception and so much disinformation that human beings have been fed throughout history i think we're just now starting to grasp how huge it is that this is the first time in history where information just flows just back and forth and the most valuable stuff is free the most valuable information that you can get online absolutely free which is you know what's the best thing about the the internet is that it's a dumb network it transmits information from point a to point b and it doesn't care what that information is so if you come up with a new idea, a new application,

and you stick it on the edge of the network, you can transmit that information to anybody else. And there's a cherished principle behind it, net neutrality, that you don't prioritize your content instead of somebody else's. You allow equal access to all for all content. And the internet doesn't care. It's just IP.

All it sees is bytes and it just moves them. And then one day somebody invented a new application and stuck it on the edge, the internet of money. And that's what I'm here to talk about today because they didn't need to ask anybody permission and they launched Bitcoin and it happened. And now that it's here, it's enabling other people to launch money applications on the Internet and it's going to fuel the Internet even faster than we've seen before. Yeah, this is a very strange time in that there's actually people that are starting to accept Bitcoin, one of the first cryptocurrencies, for solid objects. Like Tiger Direct is starting to accept Bitcoin for computers. objects. Like Tiger Direct is starting to accept Bitcoin for computers. You can order a computer on Tiger Direct from fucking Bitcoins and they'll send you a goddamn actual computer that you can

get online with. That starts becoming real. Well, Tiger Direct can very simply take that Bitcoin and immediately convert it into dollars. So they don't even have any exchange risk. And other people are willing to give them dollars for it because they see it as valuable. And that's all money is. It's a shared understanding that this thing has value because it's scarce, that it's not around a lot. It's hard to make. You can't copy it. You can't fake it. And once you have those three things, you have money and then it has value. Let's explain those. How is it possible? Well, what exactly is Bitcoin for people that are completely on the outside on this and they listen to this podcast? They're like what the fuck is he talking about new money Bitcoin? Yeah, what is what is a Bitcoin? So there's layers to this. I'll start at the top layer at the top layer Bitcoin is

Cash on the internet And I say cash because it's not just any kind of money. It's not like an account or credit card. It's not like PayPal. This is cash, which means that when you have it, you have it sitting on your computer as digital cash. And then when you send it, it goes directly from your computer to the recipient's wallet as digital cash. Now, that's the top layer. Underneath this is basically a shared ledger. That means that everyone can see all of the transactions. And the whole network agrees that Andreas sent Joe a tenth of a Bitcoin.

Great. Now the whole network knows it, so that means Joe has a tenth of a Bitcoin. And simply based on that, you can move money around. There's a lot of security and some complex math, but basically Bitcoin is a standard. It's an agreement on how to exchange money on the internet, just like the web is a standard on how to create pages and view them in a browser. There's a lot of skepticism when it comes to Bitcoin. I've spoken to people that are financial wizards that are skeptical, and I've spoken to people that are just, you know, that have just looked into cryptocurrencies

because of the rise of the popularity of Bitcoin. They said, this doesn't make sense. There's no room for inflation. There's not enough people, you know, not enough Bitcoins. It's not going to work. How are they going to create more? There's all these different arguments about why. Do you think that what we're seeing with

the rise of Bitcoin is instead of just addressing all these financial concerns and all these people that are used to the current market and the place that it's at right now, the standards, the way they run things. Instead of that, Bitcoin just creates a completely new network-driven, community-driven money. It says, fuck all your old rules. It's social network of money. It's peer-to-peer money.

It means direct from one individual to another individual, no matter where they are in the world, in seconds, for almost free. And that has never happened before. Do you think that part of the skepticism, though, is because of the fact that this other system exists? Sure.

And that this other system is our norm, our standard, and we don't want to look at something like Bitcoin objectively. Just say, okay, let's pretend that our current system of stocks and bonds... But it's not just... Yeah, and it's not just the system. It's so much part of our culture. Money is one of the first technologies. You know, fire, wheel, money.

Money has existed for tens of thousands of years, going back to shells and feathers and knots on string and giant rocks in the Polynesian Islands, and then through the Iron Age to minted coins stamped with emperors' faces. This stuff has been part of our culture for tens of thousands of years. And as a result, it's no longer just technology. It's a cultural phenomenon. And you are steeped in it from the moment you're born.

And so you acquire certain notions of what money is and how it works. And you think that the current system by which money works is the only system because we've had it for thousands of years. And even in computer science, the idea of getting distributed computers to agree on something without cheating, we thought that problem couldn't be solved until 2008 when the invention behind Bitcoin solved that problem and created a new way of doing money. And it's going to take a lot of time to understand it, primarily because people don't really understand money as it is today. They don't understand how banks work. They don't understand how the Federal Reserve creates money. They don't understand a debt-based system for money. I've read about it. I don't understand it. I've read many things. I've watched documentaries. I don't understand it. Most of the people, when they first face Bitcoin,

they start asking questions about money. And it quickly becomes apparent to all of us when we do this that we don't know much about money. So then we learn about money and we start reading about money. But, you know, it's very much part of the culture to the point where I'll talk to people about Bitcoin and they'll say, well, it's not backed by gold. So how can it have value? The dollar hasn't been backed by gold for like 60 years. And you talk to the average person in the street and they still think there's some gold in a vault and that stuff doesn't exist. What happened to all the gold in the vault? Watches.

Well, that's a whole other question. I mean, the real issue is this. Teeth. We haven't been on a gold standard for decades and all of the currencies in the world are created based on the productive capacity of the country and the legal system and because they have value because you pay your taxes with them and then they just float freely in exchange rates so they vary against each other and the because the dollar is used to buy oil it's the world reserve currency and all the other currencies are measured against it but there is no gold and and that's fine that doesn't mean it doesn't have

value it absolutely has value. That fucks up a lot of old action movies, man. Yeah. It really does. Those movies where you would break into the vault. Yeah, Lone Ranger. The bars of gold, they would always be brick-shaped. Well, the thing is, gold isn't that efficient for building a currency on

because the rates at which you can produce gold is fixed and it's hoarded and you have certain problems. Now, the nice thing about Bitcoin is that it takes the same concept of scarcity, of having something that is a limited resource, but it does it by algorithm. So you essentially have math that says that every 10 minutes, 25 new Bitcoin is created by the network as a whole with all of the computing capacity of the network. And that's fixed. And every four years, we create half as much every 10 minutes. So in four years, it goes down to 12 and a half Bitcoin every 10 minutes, and then it goes down to six and a quarter, and it keeps going down until you mint the last Bitcoin, and then you're done. 21 million coins, it's done.

And the idea is that you provide a sound basis for money, something that is rare, cannot be forged, is easily transportable, and that is the form of currency. So 21 million Bitcoins, and then it's over? There will be no more? Well, you can divide a Bitcoin 100 million pieces. So it goes down to eight digits, And that means the lowest unit is called a Satoshi. And there's 100 million Satoshis in a Bitcoin. So 21 million times 100 million,

21 quadrillion coins, plenty of coins. Jesus Christ, why is that so complicated? Why is it like 100 million? Well, I think part of the reason is that it's easier to write a number without a decimal point than just to write a smaller unit with lots of zeros after it. It's easier in computer terms to handle numbers that way. But most importantly, it doesn't matter because what you see on your screen at today might be a Bitcoin. Actually, on my wallets, I use milliBitcoins, thousands of a Bitcoin because it corresponds more to my daily purchases. You know, maybe a few years from now, you're going to be using a millionth of a Bitcoin to look at your balance. It doesn't matter what you call a unit.

The point is, what value does it have? Because someone else is willing to give you that amount of money. Right, but we have sort of this established ideal in our head of what a dollar is worth. This is $100. That looks like a $1,000 computer. We have this idea in our head, and that idea will be completely out the window when you start talking about millions of Bitcoins and trying to figure out how much is a laptop from Tiger Direct? If I buy a laptop, is it 200 millionths of a Bitcoin? Well, no. We're just talking millibits. A millibit is almost about a dollar. It's about

800-something today. So a computer would cost you about 1,200 millibits. 1,200 millibits. All right, that seems normal as long as we can get it down to numbers that correspond with dollars. But here's the thing. Do you know what I mean? This is a global phenomenon. And there are so many countries out there where their currency varies 30% a year and some now 30% a month. And in those countries, there is no stable anything. And even the dollar, we look at it today and we have this idea of what its value is. But if you look back historically, its value has been declining for almost a century now.

And today's dollar is worth the same as, you know, 13 cents at the beginning of the previous century. We don't see that on a day-to-day basis because it's one of the most stable currencies. But there's 193 currencies out there, and 180 of them are far, far worse than the dollar in terms of management. And a couple of handful of them are absolutely horrible. And the people trapped in these countries can now use Bitcoin. So this is a lot broader than just the U.S. dollar. It's not just a matter of, is this going to be comfy for consumers? This can bring people from countries that have extreme poverty, extreme problems,

that are not necessarily based on a lack of technology, that have phones that can use Bitcoin, for example. But because of politics, they're trapped in this situation. Recently, I was in Argentina, in Buenos Aires, and now they're having an even worse currency crisis. They devalued 18% last week. They're locked down. They can't take money out of the country.

They can't buy things online. If they buy something online, they have to go pick it up from a customs office and pay 50% tax on it. The country's trying to lock in the money, right? And you have these extreme situations and then you have a choice suddenly. So Bitcoin is a lot bigger than just, you know, a consumer thing for here in the US. How would someone get Bitcoins from those environments? Like, so let's say you're in some poor third world country with a really

incredibly corrupt system and fucked up economy. How does someone from that environment get a Bitcoin? Well, so even in Argentina, for example, which is not a, you know, it's a second world country that was once the, you know, the Paris of Latin America, and it's still a beautiful place. But it has these difficult political problems. It's illegal to trade on the black market dollars for pesos, right? So you can't go in and if you're a tourist and say, okay, I'm just going to give some dude on the street 200, that's illegal. And yet on every street corner, there's someone who will sell you pesos. And last time I went, I just asked them,

will you take Bitcoin? And guess what? Some of them said, never heard of it. And some of them said, yeah, we're trying to do that now. Can you help us? Whoa. So suddenly you already have this black market or gray market for currencies. And in the U.S., you never see this. But if you travel abroad, you see this all the time. Most places in the world, the official currency rate versus the one you can get from a corner,

you know, a street seller who is, you know, selling vegetables and the local currency for dollars. You know, you can do that in so many countries in the world, and for them, it's a normal thing. Now, this novel idea of this new currency, is this something that anyone right now is living off of? Is anybody getting paid by Bitcoin and paying their rent by Bitcoin, buying their food with Bitcoin? So first of all, my income is entirely Bitcoin. It has been for several months now.

How many months? Since October, perhaps. And before that, I just didn't have as much income because I've been working on Bitcoin to a level almost obsession because it's such a fascinating technology for me. And as someone who works in security and distributed systems, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be involved in something monumental. Just like when I was involved in the early days of the internet as a young scientist.

And now I can do it again with Bitcoin. So I've been obsessed. But since October, I've also been making a living off Bitcoin. And I get paid in Bitcoin. Wow. And how do you pay your rent? I convert some of it to dollars to pay my landlord until I can persuade them to take Bitcoin directly. But it won't take that long because every time I pay in dollars, I say, would you rather take Bitcoin?

And that's one of the easiest ways to get Bitcoin, by the way, is find someone who wants to pay for something with Bitcoin. Wow. And so they're not ready to yet, but you think that perhaps they're thinking about it? You might be able to pay your rent in Bitcoin? I'm always surprised by who's going to take my Bitcoin. Sometimes it's a taxi driver in Germany. Sometimes, you know, it's... And how do you give it to them? They install an app on their phone. I'm going to give you some before the end of the show for sure. They install an app on their phone and I just zap it across. Just like I could zap it from here to Kuala Lumpur in two seconds, I can zap it across the table.

Whoa. It's just like sending an email. And in fact, it's remarkably similar. I just get, you'll install an app and then you'll give me your Bitcoin address, which is like your email address, kind of. And then I'll zap some Bitcoin across to you and a few seconds later you'll see it pop up on your phone and that is real Bitcoin. And it's on

your phone. It's not sitting in a bank somewhere. You don't have the promise that maybe when you try to withdraw it, you're going to have it. This isn't a credit or something like that. This is the actual digital amount is locked by a key that's on your phone and is recognized by the entire network as a valid transaction. If you left your phone behind

in a drunken stupor, someone got a hold of your phone, could they wreck you financially? Yeah. Damn it. Say no. So no, I'm going to be, I'm going to be a hundred percent honest. There are, there are ways to protect yourself. So for example, on my phone wallet, first of all, my phone has a PIN, then my wallet has a PIN of its own. And then there's one thing that I can't do with a wallet right away, which is I can't send money. I can look at my balance, I can receive money, all of that just with a PIN. But if I want to send money, I have to enter another password. PIN, personal identification number. Yeah. So I've got a couple of different passwords so that my wallet isn't just sitting there.

But again, as I said, this is digital cash. So if you had a wallet stuffed with cash and you left it in a cafe, what happens to it? Somebody steals it or you get really lucky and someone gives it back to you and you give them some of that money. Exactly. But most likely, you know, you don't have someone to call and say, hey,

get that cash back for me. It was stolen from so-and-so location. Do you have a backup? Like if you lose your phone, can you back up from a cloud? Well, that's the nice thing about it because unlike physical money, this is digital money. You can make copies of it. You can't spend both copies. You can only spend one, but you can make copies. So you can make backups. You can even back up right onto a piece of paper, which is what I do. And this is called a paper wallet. So I have printed pieces of paper with Bitcoin keys on them. And I make two copies.

And I put one in a safe. And I put the other in a safety deposit box. And I send Bitcoin to those wallets. And then I basically have my Bitcoin sitting on paper in a bank. Kind of like a bearer bond. It's like a bearer bond, you know, or like a stock certificate. But the only difference is that that magic number that's on there allows me to redeem that

Bitcoin anywhere in the world. This is way more sophisticated than I thought it was. I thought it was a bunch of dorks running around with fake fucking Dungeons and Dragons money. Oh no, this is way more sophisticated. We'll get to talking about how you can use this to do stocks, bonds, distributed companies, autonomous companies, all kinds of things. Now, when you pay your rent and you take your Bitcoin and you convert it to money, who's giving you money for Bitcoin?

People who want to buy Bitcoin. So how do you find these people? On Craigslist? So there's a number of ways. Backpage. The straightforward one, if you come from the old banking-style world, is you open a brokerage account on a virtual currency exchange that will exchange dollars, yen, euros, whatever, to Bitcoin or even some other cryptocurrencies. And then you can go there and you can wire transfer,

you know, using your bank account, you can wire transfer money into the brokerage account as you would to buy IBM stock. You wire some money to the brokerage account as you would to buy IBM stock. You wire some money to your brokerage and then you buy some IBM stock. Well, here you wire some money there and you buy some Bitcoin with it. Whoa. So traditional brokerages deal in Bitcoin as well? No.

This is a specialized exchange that deals in Bitcoin, but it works just like a brokerage account. So you have a number of different currencies in it and you can buy one and sell the other. Are there any brokers who deal in Bitcoins? Like traditional, large scale? Not yet. Not yet. But you think that's coming? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Because the thing is, it's one of the skills they have, right? They also have the physical locations and branches to sell Bitcoin. And before long, what we're going to see is the same thing that happened in the entertainment industry when MP3 hit the scene. Like at first, everyone was like, whoa, we don't want to even touch this.

And then somebody started thinking, hey, if I start playing with this before everybody else, it's going to hurt all of us, but it's going to hurt me less, and I can start taking advantage. And they peel off the herd, and boom, you have adoption. everybody else, it's going to hurt all of us, but it's going to hurt me less and I can start taking advantage." They peel off the herd and boom, you have adoption. I think the same thing is going to start happening with banking. Some of the banks, perhaps not the big six US banks, they've got a nice comfortable $70

billion a month from the Fed right now, why would they do innovation? Maybe one of the more nimble banks, maybe in a country like Cyprus that's been hit hard by these bail-ins and you have a very open banking environment, maybe Singapore is going to decide this is a good strategic move. Maybe Macau. Who knows? The point is, in an international financial environment, all it takes is one. Yeah. One ball gets rolling and that creates the avalanche and then they stampede and then the standard changes. Right. Wow. This is very exciting. It's very complex, though. And this is what I'm trying to wrap my head around. The the amount of this Bitcoin that's created every year is limited and fixed. Who determined all this? Who created Bitcoin? Who invented

the concept? Was there several people? Yeah, you said when you exchange money, it's almost free, I heard. So that money goes somewhere. Who's getting this money? So this is where it gets a bit more complicated. But keep in mind, the internet in 1992, you had to

know Unix command line skills to send an email and it took two days to cross the network. We can get simpler and easier for most people over time, but it's still a bit geeky, so I'll get into it. One question at a time, though. Who created this? This was created by Satoshi Nakamoto, a cryptographer who used an anonymous identity or pseudonymous

identity. who used an anonymous identity or pseudonymous identity. He basically wrote a paper and the basic software, a scientific paper that explains how it works. It's actually the best way to understand Bitcoin. If you have a bit of understanding of basic science, you can read it. It's very accessible. And if you look for the Satoshi Nakamoto Bitcoin paper

or the Bitcoin paper, you'll find it's online. So he wrote a paper. And at the same time, he created the software that runs the system, right? And then gave it out to people and people started running it. Now, keep in mind, Bitcoin is an agreement. It's a standard. It's how you do certain things on the Bitcoin network that matters, right? And then there's software that implements that agreement that runs according to those rules.

Just like the internet doesn't belong to anyone. It's just an agreement of how you transmit things across the internet. And then everybody can write software that can use that standard. So Satoshi Nakamoto created the standard. What year did he do this in? In 2008. 2008. The paper came out in 2008 and followed shortly thereafter by the code.

The discussion actually lasted about a year as he was mulling this over and discussing it. And keep in mind, digital money is not new. We've been doing digital money since probably the mid-'80s. I think the first notable one was David Cholm's DigiCash. And he created a form of digital money using the new technology of cryptography at the time. Cryptography is a way of scrambling and unscrambling messages and doing digital signatures and using mathematics to prove things basically on computers. It's also what you use to protect your browsing session when you connect to your bank.

And it puts that little lock that's using cryptography. You're doing an encrypted session. So at the time, David Chom basically created digital money. And what it is, is you can have a number that has a signature on it that proves who owns it, and then you can spend that. The problem is that because it's digital, you can copy it. So what happens if you spend it twice well you have to have some kind of central authority the checks to see that you don't spend it twice

and so he put some servers together and they could handle all of the transactions and make sure nobody spent the money twice and issue the money and do all of the kind of federal reserve central bank functions and then ran it on the network, and it worked. Unfortunately, if you have a central server and you try to go against the banking system, they stomp on you. How do they stomp on you? In this case, there was a series of legal battles,

and then eventually the service got shut down. And so we've seen this happen maybe four or five times with different attempts to do digital cash with various levels of centralization. But the basic problem was this. How do you ensure that the network remains trusted and honest without, as most hierarchical systems work, but spread that trust across the whole network? And in 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto solved that problem. And he solved it by putting together four or five ideas that each of them had been done somewhat before, but he put them together in an incredible combination that just worked and worked beautifully. together in an incredible combination that just worked and worked beautifully. So what the system does is it forces everyone who's participating on the network to do a bit of computing with their

system, which is called mining. And so if you just have a wallet, you don't do this. But if you want to be part of the Bitcoin network as a miner, what you do is you run on a specialized computer and it solves this very difficult problem. And it's kind of like a competition. It's like looking for a magical number that if you plug it into an equation, it's the right number. It's almost like a global competition. Like solving a giant Sudoku puzzle. So everyone's trying, and then somebody every 10 minutes, on average, finds a solution. And that becomes a new blockoku puzzle. So everyone's trying, and then somebody, every 10 minutes on average, finds a solution,

and that becomes a new block of transactions. And when they find that solution, they get some Bitcoin, which is new Bitcoin that's created for the first time. I'm confused. Yeah, I know.

Find a solution for what? All right. So basically the idea is everybody's trying to find a way to create a new block of transactions. And in this block, they also get a reward for creating the block. What is a block of transactions? It's basically an entry on the ledger.

So as I mentioned before, there's a way to have... There's a central transaction ledger where you can see everybody's transactions. In order to write on that, in order to create a new transaction that the entire network trusts, you have to solve a very difficult problem. But if you do solve the problem, you get a reward in Bitcoin. Okay, now when you say you solve the problem, is someone physically sitting in front of their computer trying to solve the problem? No, the computer is doing it. Okay, so their computer say you solve the problem, is someone physically sitting in front of their computer trying to solve the problem? No, the computer's doing it. Okay, so their computer, you're using their CPU power. Yes, but it's essentially. Yes, exactly. Okay, so it runs in the

background. It's called proof of work. You run a program that does proof of work, which is basically solving this difficult problem. So is this in some way sort of similar in fact to how BitTorrent works where Bitcoin BitTorrent you you leave it on like if you're a file sharer yes like

how bands can spread their music that way they put their files online let people know where there are then people seed it and then they all every every Bitcoin wallet works like that it's like a little BitTorrent client and it talks to all the wallets that can find on the on the network and communicates but there are some specialized systems which which do this computation problem very very fast and they're big and noisy and have lots of fans because it's gotten very competitive so people upgraded their stuff and then they upgraded it again and then they upgraded it again and it's caused this kind of arms race of computing power but But the basic idea is that you buy a box that has this ability to solve the problem.

You plug it into the network and it runs. And it chews up electricity and it creates Bitcoin. A dedicated box to try to help solve this. And in the meantime, it makes money. Yeah, and it makes a bit of money. And people join in groups that are called pools, just like playing a lottery pool. Look at this.

Wow, look, this guy. This guy, this is his servers. These are all Bitcoin solvers. Mining. This is, if I'm not mistaken, this is a liquid cool rack system. For folks who haven't seen this photo, if you're listening to this, which is the majority of our people, what are they Googling, Brian? What's the image? Bitcoin mining.

It's the first one. Bitcoin mining. Jesus fucking Christ you have to see this picture folks when you get home Bitcoin mining they have goddamn rooms filled with computers

that they're making Bitcoin mining we're in the matrix so we're here we're in the goddamn matrix holy shit this is crazy

this is somebody's house so the Bitcoin network today is bigger than the world's top several hundred supercomputers combined. It's the largest single computing experiment on the internet ever. What's using more internet juice, Bitcoin or porn? At the moment, Bitcoin. That's not possible, son. You're talking crazy.

We need Bitcoin sex. But it's also generating an entire new economy based on that. How much prostitution has been paid for in Bitcoin? Is that possible? I have no idea. Are you sure? I'm 100% sure it has to be. No, you're just guessing. You're not 100% sure.

You're pretty sure. You can't say 100. Out of all the people on the road that's sluts, I'm sure one uses Bitcoin. One super geek slut. What if you find the first one today? All right, let me give you an argument for why that might actually make sense. If you're a sex worker,

one of the problems you will have is you're going to get extorted and exploited for that money and you're not going to keep any of it. With a Bitcoin wallet, you can basically hide that money and you can also take it in a way that cannot be taken away from you, not easily.

All you have to do is take your phone. Nope. Not so easy. No, because it's backed up. Right, exactly. You have to have your PIN number. Yeah, I mean, you're not carrying physical cash. It's a much safer exchange.

So there are many reasons why in many different environments where money is difficult, that Bitcoin is successful. I mean, here's the thing. Bitcoin is very efficient money. It's a very good system of money. If you can send money like an email anywhere in the world, well, yeah, it's tremendously useful. And so in places, and that includes criminal activities, where it's difficult to move money,

Bitcoin's going to be good for that. But that's not the point, because at the end of the day, there's another 6 billion of us who want to do good things with it. And just like on the internet, you can use it for crime, but it gives so much more to humanity. Of course you can use Bitcoin for crime. But the reality is U. is US dollars are used for crime More than any other currency in the world

Prostitution is the most ridiculous crime ever. It's so should be legal I'm it's so ridiculous that people can have sex for free, but they can't have sex for money How come you can give massages for money massages of prostitution? Okay, they are they might as well be prostitution. They're awesome. Don't get me wrong. I love massages. But it's fucking prostitution. The person doesn't want to rub you. Whether it's a guy or a girl, you want them to rub you.

You give them money, they rub you. They even pretend they like rubbing you. They bring you water. They get you a towel. They don't give a fuck about that towel bullshit. Come on, man. That's part of the gig. That's part of the prostitution gig.

Come on, man. That's part of the gig. That's part of the prostitution gig. The idea that in 2014 it's still illegal to pay someone for sex is so stupid. Not even handjobs? Nothing. No penis. Can't touch it. It's a bad place. It's a bad place and you can't have money involved in your bad place. It's like paying money for crime. You call it crime.

I just found out, yes, it's being used for prostitution. The first one was September of this year, or last year, Passion VIP, an escort agency in England, says they now have accepted Bitcoins as payment. Godspeed to you, Passion VIP in England. Godspeed to you. So now we know. That kind of crime.

But let's separate ourselves from such controversial talk because this could really screw people up, their idea of what Bitcoin really is. No, I mean, here's the thing. Bitcoin is not just money. Bitcoin is an invention. And what that invention allows people to do is move value across the internet. And that invention means you can do Bitcoin, but it also means you can do a lot of other things. And Bitcoin is an incredible invention because for the first time, it completely democratizes money. It separates money from a function of power of the state to an individual exchange between people like it used to be when it was shells and feathers, right?

used to be when it was shells and feathers, right? Or, you know, barter exchange. But the beauty of it is that it can, at the moment, if you think about it, there's, let's say, a billion people in the Western world who have not just banking facilities, but like turbocharged power banking, they have international transactions, they can buy stocks on any stock market, they can do wire transfers, some of them are credited investors, etc. The power user of banking. There's another maybe 2 billion people who have a basic bank account, and then there's the rest of them. The giant majority of the population on this planet has very limited access to banking,

very limited access to international finance, to lending, to capital, to the ability to even change their money to another currency. And so Bitcoin is so much more important for them. I call this the other six billion. Just keep the focus on the other six billion because for the billion, it might be a fad. But for the other six billion, this is an opportunity to change the way we deal with poverty and to change the way we unite with poverty and to change the way we unite the economic system of the planet, which is a whole other level of conversation. We look at Bitcoin and we think of it as just money, but it's not just money for the internet. Money for the

internet is what it does, and it does it very well. But it's the internet of money, and it allows people at the edge by downloading just a simple application to join an economy and then to hold their own money without any state or corporation being able to steal it from them or inflate it out of value and destroy their children's future. It allows them to hold and control that money and send it to anyone in the world they want to instantly for very little money. I mean, that's never happened before. And the implications it has for poverty, for the developing world, for the way non-governmental organizations work is staggering. Just take one example, international remittances. At the moment, $500 or so billion sent every year from the first world to countries in the developing world.

And out of that money, $74 billion gets spent in fees, fees as high as 30 or 40%. In fact, the poorer the country, the higher the percentage of fee you have to pay. So a Somalian migrant in the U.S. who's sending $100 home, So Somalian migrants in the US who are sending $100 home, only $70 gets to the wife or the brother back home or the husband back home. And the rest gets chewed out by the money transfer companies. Now, we give the developed world $150 or so billion to the richest and hope it trickles down. And then we take $ 74 billion from the poorest. What if we could change that? What if we could enable Bitcoin remittances and international payments and re-deliver that 74 billion of their money and allow them to send that money directly

home without paying that fee? That changes the lives of a billion people. Wow. So you envision Bitcoin as being a universal currency. Absolutely. It already is. Will it absorb the dollar? Will the dollar go away? No. Will the dollar coexist along with Bitcoin? What is your hope for this? Well, I mean, I think that like many disruptive technologies, it's going to change the power balance. It's not that the dollar goes away or the banking system goes away. It just has less power and less relevance in a new world where people control their own money and can send it to each other. So ultimately the grand hope is that the money, the dollar that we see today, becomes in the future much like the written letter. You don't fucking need it anymore.

You can send emails. You can send someone a text message. You don't have to get on a fucking pony and carry your mail over to another state. Yes, and the thing is the dollar, again, is the world reserve currency, and there's only one of it. Now, are there 193 other currencies that some of them may end up getting replaced? Some of them may end up even converting into cryptocurrencies of a nation state, you know, like, I don't know, Thailand coin. Why not? Or Fed coin, if we're doing it here. But

the point is that we can't judge Bitcoin on the standard of the most comfortable world reserve currency that's the most stable currency. We have to look at the rest of the world and see what their currencies are like. And in many countries, the currency is worth less than goat shit, because you can burn goat shit longer than you can burn these bundles of paper money that doesn't burn very well. And in those countries, this is not a matter of shopping. This is a matter of the future of their children and it's a matter of development.

Wow, that's really fascinating. What are the concerns as far as security? What are the concerns as far as if someone steals your bitcoins? Is there any sort of a regulatory body that can determine whether or not someone's computer or phone's been hacked into and their bitcoins have been stolen? I mean, I have. Has that become an issue yet? Or is that a potential issue? It is a potential issue, and it has become an issue. And yeah, people have had their Bitcoin stolen. How has that happened? Well, their computer gets hacked, and then they have a password on the account, but they don't have like, you know, one of the things you can do very easily is set up what's called two-factor authentication. So every time you try to use your Bitcoin wallet,

it sends you a little text message, and you have to enter the secret code, like you do with your bank. Slightly higher. So if your computer's being hacked, they don't get the text messages. They can't easily get into your account. What is that article you just brought up, Brian? This is the latest hack. I know that Bitcoin's been hacked a few times, but this last one was $1.2 million. And there's an article on Wired called 1.2 million hacks shows why you should never store Bitcoins on the internet. What happens to something like that?

They just lost this, right? There's no getting this back. And is there somebody that, like a group of people, that you think is responsible for this? Well, no. I mean, there's always been a thriving hacker underground that uses the most efficient way to steal money. And they stole money from Target by compromising all of those credit cards just a few weeks ago.

And that affected a lot more people than any of these thefts. And, you know, they're going to go after wherever the money is. And if the efficient money is Bitcoin, they're going to go after Bitcoin too. But here's the trick. Because this money is controlled through mathematical security and because it's programmable, we can actually create new ways of securing money so we can innovate. Whether it's the paper wallet example I gave you where you can create a physical copy that you can secure old style in a safe deposit box. Whether it's using multi-signature transactions where, for example, the money is locked and it takes two keys or three keys to unlock it. So, for example, you can have a backup company that provides the second key, and so if you lose

the primary key, you could use the secondary key. You can do digital backups, you can do time locks, you can do all kinds of things now with money, because it's programmable, that allow you to create new ways of securing it. So it's still very early days. Some people who don't take care put too much of their Bitcoin in one place, and yeah, that's not a very good idea. They have weak passwords. So in this situation where these people lost $1.2 million in Bitcoin, there's no bringing that back, there's no tracing it,

there's no finding out where it went. Are there social securities on these Bitcoins, or numbers rather on these Bitcoins that nope like dollar bills you know they trace like batches it's cash no it's it's it because it's digital i mean this is one of the key um one of the key controls in the system is that it's like teleporting the digital cash and you know once it's not on your teleporter pad and it's gone, you just hope the other teleporter will send it back to you because otherwise it's gone.

I mean, it's digital cache. It can go very easily because it flows very easily. So what we're doing at the moment is developing new security techniques to make it both harder to steal in the first place, to have backups so that you can get back if a key is stolen before it's used. There's all kinds of things we can do to make this better. It's still early days.

There was a story about that guy who left his Bitcoin on his hard drive and tossed it out accidentally. It's worth $9 million. Yeah. Right. I'm sure you're aware of that story. What happened to that poor guy? This was in England and throughout

the... Actually, all that happened is that a lot of people showed up at the local landfill with metal detectors. So a lot of people were looking for this guy's hard drive? Treasure hunters, yeah. Well, digital treasure hunting is going to be a thing part of our future. So people are going to find old hard drives like 2013 and look for bitcoins on them.

I love stories like this. I was on Reddit the other day and I was reading this great story. This student who said, you know, back in 2010, I did some Bitcoin mining on my laptop and I just found that wallet. And it says I have 917 Bitcoin. Am I rich or am I missing something? Because this would really change my life. I've got student loans. And the guy had, you know, at the time it was $900,000 worth of Bitcoin that he had found from a laptop he left laying around in 2010 and did some mining.

And that story is great. And it's happened many, many times. So did that guy sell that and become like almost a millionaire? Yep. That's insane. And this was a student who was like, I'm having trouble

with my student loans. You know, this could really help me. Am I doing, am I, he couldn't believe it. He was like, am I seeing this wrong?

That's from mining? So, okay, let's get crazy. Talking Monkey Studios here. We decided to start a mining operation. Don't? Don't.

No. I mean, it's highly, trying to win a million dollars like that. I'm sorry. That tells me don't. No, so... All of a sudden I had it figured out. So the reason people have been successful with Bitcoin is because they got interested in the technology when only a few

thousand people knew about it. And when they got involved at that point, Bitcoins were worth like a hundredth of a penny or a thousandth of a penny. And now they're worth $800. So if you ended up mining some then, even if you only mined a few, you know, plus it was a lot easier to mine then because over time the network adjusts the difficulty. So the more people trying, the harder it gets. So the network is autonomous. There's no centralized server. There's no central

anything. It's, it's a series of rules that everybody follows, and it's hard to grasp at first because we've never seen this type of distributed organization. And is there any organization whatsoever as far as like a CEO? So where does that money go then? Every time the transaction goes, does it go to Satoshi Nakamoto? No, no, no. That motherfucker's living like a pimp.

Yeah, if he even exists, there's not even a real picture of him anywhere on the internet. No one's actually ever confirmed his identity, so it could be just the government. He's in the X-Men, bro! Or anonymous. What if he's invisible? He's an invisible hacker. Physically invisible. So, all of the people who are

doing the mining, who have the hardware and are using it to mine for Bitcoin, what they do is they secure the network. By running this very hard problem, they prevent anyone else from cheating. Because essentially, they end up voting on every block together with this enormous computing power. And that enormous computing power means no one can falsify the block because they would

have to do that much computing power to falsify the ledger, right? Right. So if you can't falsify it without doing enormous amounts of computing power, but if you do enormous amounts of computing power, you get a reward in Bitcoin. Well, you're going to try and win the game rather than cheat. Cheating is extremely difficult and not rewarding, whereas participating is rewarding. I see. Right? So all of these miners are working, and what they do is they verify the transactions and they secure the entire network, which actually, if you look at it on the grand scheme of things,

is a lot cheaper than guards and armored trucks and alarm companies and vaults and data centers and fraud prevention centers and all of those things that we have in our traditional payment system. It's actually a lot cheaper to do it by proving you're doing all of this computation for the network security. Now, they collect fees. So when they verify a block,

the person who manages to verify it first by finding this little magic number, the solution to the problem, I'll explain that in a second, collects the fees that are in the block. So all of the transactions that get verified in the next 10 minutes, the miner who finds that block will collect all of the little fees, 40 cents here, 40 cents there, 40 cents there. It's about 40 cents to send a simple transaction right now. And they'll also get a reward of 25 Bitcoin. And then everyone will start the race again to verify the next block of transactions for the next 10 minutes of spending.

And the first one to find the solution wins, gets the reward, gets the fees, and they all start competing again. But you don't know who's going to win it. And the enormous amount of computation that goes into it ensures that no one can cheat. Even if you put together 600 more powerful supercomputers in the world,

you would not be able to beat the Bitcoin system right now. What a fascinating element to be added to the idea of economy, this idea of the unified group of computers working on ever increasingly complex computations. So the scientific term for it is a consensus asset ledger, which means it's a ledger, a list of transactions about assets, in this case, Bitcoin, that's based on consensus, on agreement. And the agreement is reached by everyone voting with their computing power. And because there's so much of it, you can't cheat the election. Now, when you said that there have been other attempts at a new type of currency that have been shut down by the current banking system, that was because they had a place where they had centralized servers.

Exactly. They operated out of these centralized servers. Or a centralized organization or a centralized something. What did they do to stop them? Is there any legality issues when it comes to doing something like this or creating a new type of currency? Oh, sure. There's enormous legality issues.

I mean, the banking system has this fortress wall of regulations around it that acts partly supposedly to protect consumers from misbehaving banks, but also serves very well to prevent competition from small banks because it's very expensive to pass all the tests, right? Right. So it keeps the rabble out, but then a lot of the criminals end up being inside this whole system. Here's the thing. That whole regulatory system comes down hard on people who decide they want to create their own currency.

And the nice thing about Bitcoin is that there is no one there. I mean, it's basically an agreement. When you say comes down hard, like in what manner? Like how would they come down hard? Like let's say you just- Asset forfeiture, seizures, lawsuits, money laundering, charges, all kinds of things like

that. And this is because you're not doing things by regulation? Is that what you're saying? Well, it has happened that way in the past. So no matter what, if you decide to create your own currency and you have an actual business and you're a centralized business, that centralized business is responsible for following all of the government's standards

on banking, 100% across the board. And if you don't, that's where money laundering charges and that's where larceny and a lot of different charges get brought up. That's what goes on? Yeah. Now that's avoided somehow or another through Bitcoin? Well, it's not avoided. It's simply that Bitcoin is a completely decentralized system. It works based on math. So there's no one running Bitcoin. It was an invention,

just like someone invented electricity. Then we all learned how it worked and we all ended up using it. But does it matter who invented the electricity that makes this light work? No. who invented the electricity that makes this light work? No. Bitcoin is like that. It's a standard. It's an idea. And it runs by people participating in the network.

So there's nothing, there's no central location. There's no company behind it. There's no leader. There's nothing. It's a decentralized. It's just like no one runs the internet. So if you say, I don't want the internet to do this, who are you going to sue? It's a global network.

I mean. What? Al Gore. Al Gore for inventing it. Right. Well, that's one of the reasons Satoshi Nakamoto disappeared, because he was smart enough to know that, you know, smearing him would affect Bitcoin. But couldn't he, since he programmed everything, have access to everybody's money if he wanted

to? No. So let me explain that. The software itself is so-called open source software. That means that it's a recipe of code that implements the Bitcoin agreement according to the network standards. And you can write your own.

I mean, if you don't want to run that software, you can write a version of it. In fact, there are five or six different fully compliant versions that can participate in the network. And even if you take the basic one that started with him writing it, but since has evolved in a community project with lots of people writing code, just like the internet, you just agree to play by the rules. And then you can read the code and you can see exactly what happens.

There is no controls in there. There's no magic secret keys. You can see how it works. What are you saying? Hold on a second. There's five or six different types of Bitcoin? There's five or six different programs that can do the full Bitcoin language on the Bitcoin network. Five or six different versions. But they all speak Bitcoin, so it doesn't matter. But what are they doing differently than the other ones? Just different programming languages, different ways of implementing them. Some are more efficient in some ways, some are more efficient in the others, but they don't do anything different in terms of Bitcoin. Just like there are lots of different internet routers and they all

speak TCP IP on the internet and Cisco makes, and Juniper Networks makes some others, and HP makes some others, but they all speak the same. I see. So there's no concern whatsoever that there's any security openings because of the fact these guys are producing their own software that communicates in Bitcoin? Right, because the trust is based on computation, not access. So this is a key thing to realize.

All of our payment systems and banking systems up to now keep trust in the system by keeping people out, by controlling very carefully who connects to the network. And that means the network is always very small. In Bitcoin, all of the trust is done by this joint computation, right? And so who talks to the network doesn't matter because the network is trusted and safe regardless of what you try to send to it or receive from it or how you interpret it because there's no center. So this has radical implications because that means you can let anyone talk to the network or rather you can let everyone talk to the network and everyone can be a bank on that network and everyone can send wires, transfers on that network.

You have the power of a bank on your smartphone. And as long as it speaks the Bitcoin language and understands it with the rest of the network, you don't need to trust that that application is running. The trust happens in the transactions in the network. You can't cheat no matter what you write. So what is the motivation to write a new software? What is the motivation? Just different divisions. Like there are different PCs that all run Windows.

There's different clients that all run Bitcoin. I see. So they just have decided to run their own program that speaks Bitcoin. Yeah. But it participates in the exact same fashion. Right. You have a Chrome browser. You have a Firefox browser. Why are there two?

Right. Same thing. In fact, it's very similar. Like a BitTorrent client, there are three different versions, but they all speak BitTorrent and your browsers all speak HTTP, the hypertext transfer protocol. So no matter what website you go to, and there are lots of website programs that are made by different companies that speak the server side of the web. There's lots of different versions, but what matters is the common language they speak. And Bitcoin is like that. It's a common language, a protocol, or a standard. And that means that no matter what you attach to the network,

whether it's a wallet that's written for Android or a wallet that's written for iPhone or a wallet that's fancier or a wallet that's more geeky, all of these will speak Bitcoin to the network and will work with the system. And the trust is in the network. Now, when we were talking earlier about if you had a centralized location, centralized server, that could be shut down by the banks and they could charge you with all these crimes. centralized location, centralized server that can be shut down by the banks and they can charge you with all these crimes. Is there any concern, legally speaking, that if you were a person who has all your money in Bitcoin,

that maybe one day the government can come along and say Bitcoin is not a valid currency. It's illegal to use, using it as a crime. We find it on you. We're going to take it from you, and we're going to arrest you. Well, actually, the government has already said that Bitcoin is legal and that users using Bitcoin are doing perfectly legal business. Can you pay taxes in Bitcoin?

Not directly, no. You'd have to convert it to dollars, but there's a company that will take your Bitcoin and pay the taxes for you. Bingo. Done. So, back in April, the FinCEN, which is the Financial Crime Enforcement Network, created a memorandum where it explained how it would treat Bitcoin. And it said, if you're just an individual using Bitcoin to buy and sell things, great. It's just like anything else. You're going to pay your transaction and that's it. If you're someone who makes a living in Bitcoin,

you pay income tax. And if you're someone who's mining on Bitcoin, you pay income tax on those Bitcoins. If you're an investor, you pay capital gains. It's treated just like any other currency. So if you make your living off Bitcoin, that's how you get paid. You convert that to dollars, then you pay your percentage in dollars.

Is that what you do? You convert like how much you made in Bitcoin per year and what that would be in dollar bills and then pay the percentage on that? Right. But I mean, that's not different from what I did before when I got paid in euros. I mean, occasionally I get a paycheck from a customer in Europe. They're going to pay me in euros, right? What do you do? You convert it to dollars. You mark the rate at which they paid you. You invoice them. They paid you in euros. You mark what rate it was, and then you put it on your tax return as income. People are notoriously bad about reporting income

when it's independent, when they're not being taxed by their employer, when it's not coming directly out of their paycheck. Comedians are terrible about that. I know so many comedians that have had serious IRS problems because of that. I would think that that sort of issue would arise with Bitcoin, where people are responsible for paying taxes on these and they don't. I mean, how much of an issue is that? And how much of a criminality issue could that become? Well, I think as Al Capone found out, there's one thing you can't do in the U.S. and that's not pay your taxes.

They might not get you for anything else. What are you pulling up? You keep pulling up these articles. Listen, I pay my taxes and if you earn money in Bitcoin, you pay your taxes on Bitcoin. It's as simple as that. pay your taxes on Bitcoin. It's as simple as that. And if you think you can get away with not doing that, then you'll find out, like many people before you, that the IRS will come, will audit you, and you will end up paying a lot more. Yeah. Even if you want to pay them back and agree to pay them back, they still put you in jail. They're like, eh, I don't think you need

to sit in a cage for a little while and think about what you did. I mean, that would simply be a monumentally stupid thing to do. To think that somehow that would protect? No. I mean, they're going to track down your accounts just as effectively with Bitcoin as they do with other things. They're not stupid. What are these articles you keep pulling up, Brian? I just keep on finding new things about

different news reports. Like this was four hours ago where two guys have been arrested. A major prominent players in the Bitcoin universe Charles Sherman was arrested by federal prosecutors on Sunday and accused of helping grease the wheels for drug transactions you know using bitcoins and uh and Mr. Shrim was also the founder and chief executive of a popular website called BitInstant where bitcoins could be bought using dollars and so it's it what it seems like there's a lot of people getting arrested.

There was another guy that I flashed up earlier that was arrested. It seems like there's a lot of shady stuff going on in this universe right now. Honestly, that's the only reason I never went and got into Bitcoin. You don't feel nervous about all these recent news things at all? Because you seem very pro, like, I'm not worried about it at all. Well, I think he already stated his position that people are not going to stop going online and shopping on Amazon.com if Amazon gets hacked. What you're dealing with is a few people that are scumbags

that are operating in this truly revolutionary system that is very beneficial. Yeah, but this is like savings accounts. This is like robbing a bank, you know? Well, no. So here's my perspective. Bitcoin is a technology that is powerful and is being used by school teachers to manage PTA groups. It's being used by churches to manage tithing and their

collection plates and their clubs. And it's also being used by criminals occasionally to do crimes, just like any other currency. In fact, the point is that compared to another currency like the dollar, you know, the money laundering that happens with a dollar. I mean, HSBC was found and convicted under a consent agreement, I think, for $17 billion of money laundering with the worst Mexican cartels. And they got a minor fine and no one went to jail. And Wachovia was money laundering hundreds of billions of dollars with various drug cartels in Asia.

And again, nothing happened. So let's not pretend that suddenly Bitcoin is like this criminal situation. It's not. It just represents, just like the Internet represents society and you get the whole spectrum. Bitcoin as a currency can be used for economic activity, and that means the whole spectrum. And you'll have a small subset who are people who take advantage, and then you have the vast majority increasingly now as it's getting more mainstream. Exactly. Who see the possibility of being able to do exciting new things with money that weren't possible before, and to enable new forms of commerce.

There are hundreds of startups that are innovating with new forms of, for example, how to do settlement and escrow on a real estate transaction and not spend 2% on that, but do it with Bitcoin much more safely, much more effectively. Companies that are working on doing charitable foundations based on Bitcoin end more safely, much more effectively. Companies that are working on doing charitable foundations based on Bitcoin endowments, charities that are working to do remittances to foreign countries to help the poor people. You know, all kinds of activities are happening, but what is the primary focus of the media? It is to generate page views and, you know, portraying the sensationalist stuff always wins out so there's

a lot more to bitcoin don't get fooled by the fact that you know some some things are emphasized as if that's the be all and end all to bitcoin well certainly some things are emphasized but those are legitimate stories i mean that was a legitimate story the story about the guy getting arrested for you can't judge the media on reporting legitimate crimes. No, I don't think that's the issue. The problem is you get a lot more of that than is actually occurring, and you get a lot less of the stuff that's really interesting and important in my view. The positive stories don't generate paid views. The positive stories, exactly.

And the way I look at Bitcoin, I think about the possibility you can create jobs. I look at it as a technological innovation. I look at it as an engine for growth in a stagnant economy. So those are the things that stick in my mind, jobs, innovation, and growth, not the fact that some bad dude used Bitcoin to do bad things. Your example of the bank that was laundering money with the drug cartels is absolutely perfect because that barely got a peep out of people and that was a very recent decision and you know i mean i saw some outrage from a few twitter users i literally i read the story and my mouth was just hanging open i was like how could they get away with that and just get a fine like they dealt with murderers and they laundered their drug money and they did it for a long time and they made a lot of money.

Yeah. And they just got a slap on the wrist. And the fine wasn't even up to the power of the money they made. That's the shocking thing. It's not even covering the profits they lost, which basically rewards it and says, yeah, go ahead, do it again. You made a great return on that investment. There's a real issue with this whole Mexican drug war is that there's so much money to be made and being a part of it and it leaves so many holes open for corruption and even legal

corruption like this type of stuff where it's it's they do something they get fined by whatever regulatory body but yet they're still in business they're still they're enacting and they profited on that decision Encouraging literally encouraging people to continue to do business with illegal groups like that if you can make that kind of profit Which you know, there's a real issue in this country a massive amount of distrust of law enforcement And there's a big part of that becomes It comes out of the war on drugs, it comes out of the war on drugs. It comes out of the war on, name the drug, whether it's cocaine. All these different people that are struggling to keep things illegal are pumping up all these businesses that sell these illegal drugs because there's this massive demand for it.

So when you see a war on drugs, what you're seeing is an engine to generate money for crime. That's all it is. People are not going to stop altering their consciousness, but you are ensuring that the people that are profiting off of that are going to be criminals. And then it leaves the door open for people who are in actual law enforcement to see these loopholes and see these ways they can skim a little money and take a little bit home for themselves. And next thing you know, you've got corruption. And next thing you know, you've got bankers going, listen, I can guarantee you the worst that's going to happen is we're going to get a fine.

And the fine's going to be little, and we're going to make a fuckload of money. And these guys, Pedro's coming over, and he's got a donkey cart filled with gold coins. Oh, this is the best part of the story. In one of these bank situations where they had these branches in Mexico and they were putting literally millions of dollars in suitcases and sticking them through the teller window, they actually ended up designing and mass manufacturing suitcases that fit through the slot because they were doing it every single day.

So they had a teller window slot fitting briefcase so they could stuff that cash through and no one went to jail. Wow. That's amazing. So, you know, I mean, we can talk about money all day and some money will create situations

for people to take advantage. Absolutely. Well, it does that way with guns. It does that way with guns. It does that way with everything. I mean, it's that whole, that Fast and Furious investigation that, you know about that? That was where the whatever government agency was selling arms to Mexican drug dealers so that they can, quote unquote, track the guns. You know, it's ridiculous because those guns actually got used for killing American service members, American people that were involved in Border Patrol, people that were involved in law enforcement. A lot of these guns wound up being used to actually kill Americans, more than one.

And the idea behind it is so preposterous, the idea that you're going to sell weapons to criminals so that you could track where these weapons go like no that's a fucking terrible idea these are the people that are in charge of deciding you know what kind of laws get enforced and what what atmosphere of law enforcement this this country has and you see things like that it's so frustrating and confusing because it seems almost like a blatant crime. Like someone sold some guns to these Mexican drug lords and they did it under the guise of this crazy operation. We're just going to sell them guns and keep an eye on them. That way we'll track them and then we're going to get them that way. You're giving them guns. Like that's what they want. That's what they need to perform crimes. You're giving them tools like that's what they want that's what they need to perform crimes you're giving them

tools it's like a guy who's a fucking carpenter you're giving him a saw and a hammer you're giving it to him and you're literally telling him to go use them i mean that's essentially what you're doing and you're profiting off that how is how are you not in jail for selling guns how can you say that that was a an idea a plan that you had i mean it mean, it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. And it's, it's impossible to, to read those stories and, and, and understand how we could ever trust the people that are in charge of, of, of running this country. If this is something you're capable of doing, how the fuck can anybody trust you? How could anybody ever take your leadership seriously? If this is what you do? This is madness. Well, I mean, that's one of the reasons that I think a lot of people are also passionate about Bitcoin is that they've realized, especially since 2008, that these same people cannot be trusted to run the money system. And we've seen now for the last, for example, five years, the Fed has been printing between 85 85 now tapered down to about

$70 billion a month and giving it as corporate welfare and direct subsidies to the banks. So we didn't get a stimulus, but they are continuing for five years now to remain solvent based on $70 billion a month. That's a trillion dollars a year almost in dollars generated by the Fed. Most people don't even know this is happening. These are the people running our money. And what it means is that you go out to use your dollars at the store and suddenly you can buy a lot less bread

and a lot less milk and a lot fewer eggs. But then they take items out of the inflation index so it looks like there's no inflation whereas anybody who's trying to spend their dollars knows that things are getting harder and harder and harder, right? These are the people running our money. So Bitcoin offers an alternative approach, which says, let's trust math. Let's trust that the system runs based on a rule, a simple mathematical rule, and everybody agrees that that is the rule by which money is created, and no one can monkey with it.

And that's the beauty of it, because if you know the rules, it reduces the uncertainty, it reduces the risk. And when you have a simple system where people can interact with each other and exchange money based on simple mathematic rules, that system's going to do quite well, because people no longer trust their governments even here, and it's much worse everywhere else. Do you think that these issues that we have with the financial system and the law enforcement

system are sort of magnified by the solution of Bitcoin, that this being the internet of money, that really we need an internet of law enforcement. We need an internet of regulations. We need what we all agree on. We don't need what's been stuffed down our throat. We need what we agree on by consensus based on the information that's currently available, which is what we would get if we didn't have some sort of a centralized group that's in charge of deciding what's legal and not legal, how things are enforced, how things are done, how laws are created. Let's talk about smart law and smart contracts, because this is a perfect opportunity. Bitcoin, the underlying invention, the blockchain asset ledger, as it's called,

basically allows people to agree on who owns what and to resolve differences through this computation. But the basic thing that that means is that you can start doing smart contracts. That means that you can put contracts into the system, and then they either get executed because the conditions are met, or they do not, based on mathematics. So you could say, for example, I'm going to have, instead of having a deed to my car that's registered with the DMV, I'm going to have a digital deed that's on the Bitcoin network.

When someone pays me the money to buy that car, that transaction is married to the deed transferring to them. The verification happens by the Bitcoin network, which I trust, based on distributed consensus. No one at the center, no one monkeying with the rules. based on distributed consensus. No one at the center, no one monkeying with the rules. So now you can start doing contracts and using the same basic mathematics to fully resolve contracts. You could have, for example, a parent

setting up a number of transactions in the blockchain, in the Bitcoin network, that send money to their kids in two decades when they're going to be 18 or 20 or 21, right? So like a trust fund or a will, and you could write that as a contract and then execute it on the Bitcoin network. And then no one can stop it. No one can reverse it. No one can invalidate it. That's pretty powerful stuff. It allows people to have contracts between them, between each other, that are adjudicated, if you like, by the Bitcoin network based on the

mathematical rules. And how would these things be enforced if they had to be in a court of law? Would that ever be an option? Would they ever be considered legally binding? Well, the simple matter is that the transaction goes through or the transaction does not go through. The transaction is either valid because you presented the right keys or it is not valid. And once the transaction has gone through, it's gone through. I mean, that's the simple way the network works.

So, you know, adjudication is something that you then have to deal with after the fact. Like if a parent put a transaction in the Bitcoin network that gave money to their kid as part of a will, that can't be contested. When that kid presents the key, that transaction goes through. Done. The network has agreed that that money has transferred. It's transferred. So it doesn't need a judge's written consent

or it doesn't need court of law. No, it's mathematical rules instead. The benefit of this is that instead of relying on the ambiguity of language, which is the basis of most law, for many things you will have to, but for some simple things like doing an escrow for a house or buying a car or transferring property or doing a trust or a will, you could simply convert those legal contracts into Bitcoin transactions that then get executed under a set of rules. And suddenly you've got a form of smart law, self-executing law that happens based on the Bitcoin network's ability to

agree on what's true. It's fascinating to think that this could be one step in an ultimate revamping of our society and a revamping of our society based on the internet. And that if Bitcoin and things like Bitcoin, these peer-used groups, these groups of many people agreeing on a standard and subscribing to a system, if that can happen with this, it can start happening with a lot of things. It can start happening with education. It can start happening even with law enforcement.

The idea of community law enforcement or figuring out some way to fund private law enforcement or private contractors based on a situation like this. So for the biggest part of human history, a lot of the most difficult problems like communicating at distances or agreeing with lots of different people simply didn't scale. And because you couldn't scale solutions to those problems, we built hierarchical institutions to solve them. Representative democracy, we built councils and committees to solve decision-making. We built banks and central banks in order to solve issuance of currency

and other things like that. And we built hierarchical media organizations because we needed a single voice to tell us what to think. And then gradually we're seeing these solutions that are decentralized, that solve the problem without a hierarchical organization, and that scale. So the internet was the first decentralized communications that scales to the whole planet. And so suddenly all of the hierarchical solutions for communication are no longer necessary. They solve a problem that doesn't exist. The problem of it being difficult to transmit information across a continent or across the globe. Once that problem goes away, the institutions

built to solve it, news systems, large entertainment and marketing organizations to, you know, create single output products, all of those are no longer necessary, and the choice blossoms. Bitcoin is simply the same concept of decentralization, but applied to money. And one of the interesting things is that Bitcoin at its core works on the fact that you can decentralize voting and do voting at scale. And the voting that's happening right now is the voting to agree on who has the Bitcoin. But you could do voting for other things like stocks, bonds, global lotteries, national elections,

and things like that. When you say the voting is to see who has the Bitcoins... So when essentially the mining process that verifies each block of transaction and secures it is like a giant vote, an election that happens every 10 minutes. And by looking at the transactions, you can tell who has the Bitcoin. If the entire network has said, Andrea sent Joe a Bitcoin, and that's been verified by the network,

then everyone trusts Joe has a Bitcoin and will be willing to accept that Bitcoin in payment for something, right? So essentially that you have this, every 10 minutes, you have this consensus where the entire network agrees on all of the transactions that have happened, who has what, what's going on on the system. The ability to, at a massive scale, have everyone agree on what the truth is, that is the core invention behind Bitcoin that makes currency possible, but it also makes other things possible, including elections. So you can do some pretty incredible things because what you've done is you've decentralized decision making. The internet decentralized communications. Bitcoin is decentralizing money, but at its core is an invention that decentralizes decision making.

Now, what are the concerns as far as Bitcoin getting shut down and what repercussions or what kind of blowback, if any, have you guys received? The people that are in charge of spreading all of this, Bitcoin evangelist, as it were. Is there any repercussions or any blowback or is there anything so far? No, I mean, there's little misunderstandings that happen every now and then. People at first who don't understand the technology sometimes sit down and have conversations to understand it better. But, you know, the point is that at the moment, Bitcoin is legal to use. And it's not just legal to use in the U.S., but it's legal to use in pretty much every country.

For individuals, certainly, I don't think any country has banned it or has even attempted to ban it. Bitcoin is money as a piece of content that you can send on the internet. So if you wanted to ban it, it would be relatively difficult to do that without shutting down the internet. So that's one thing to put out there. But the point is that nobody's trying to ban Bitcoin. Nobody's trying to shut us down. I think, especially in the US, and especially among senior lawmakers like the Senate who had hearings recently about Bitcoin, the prevailing attitude is, look, this is generating growth, it's generating jobs, it's a huge innovation. And we see that it's being used in a very broad

manner and can change a lot of things. You know, maybe we should take a wait and see approach. manner and can change a lot of things. Maybe we should take a wait-and-see approach. And the price went up quite dramatically after they said that. But the general attitude is most politicians are far more interested in the possibility that this might generate growth and also jobs, and as a result, votes and campaign finance money, than they are about beating this down because it's going to affect different interests. So they're still open to it. And I think we've got a tremendous opportunity to educate people about all of the incredible things we can do and also highlight the fact that this Bitcoin economy, just in the last

year, has generated thousands of jobs. In an environment where we have economic stagnation, we've got this bloom of innovation and technology, much like the first burst of the internet. And, you know, that's a tremendous thing. You don't want to squash that just because of a misunderstanding. Do you think that there's a lack of blowback because the people in the powers that be just haven't considered Bitcoin to be a threat yet? Because we talk about like politicians not acting to try to silence it, to service the people that get them in the office, the lobbyists

or special interest groups or what have you. Like that's just because they haven't been contacted by those people to try to do something about Bitcoin. I think even the banks are ambivalent on this because while it may be disruptive to some of their banking practices, it is also one of the most interesting and innovative things to happen in finance in the last hundred years.

And so I think a lot of banks are smart enough to say, look, we're good at technology. We know money. We've got branches. We've got customers. We've got marketing. We've got brands. We know how to do security.

We could really make a good deal with this Bitcoin thing and use it and make some really interesting financial things. So there's this mixed bag, just like, you know, and I'll bring the same example. When entertainment companies were first faced with the possibility of MP3, yes, some people were like, oh my God, this is going to destroy everything.

Music will die, right? Which is the same they've said with every previous technology. You were right though. But no, they weren't because, right. But the point is that since then, the number of genres, the number of artists, the number of, the amount of music has exploded. People get a broader range of music than ever before. And MP3s have created so much good in the entertainment industry, so much more than damage, right? And I think even in banking environments, they recognize that with Bitcoin, there's this mixed bag, which is that the good far outweighs the bad. And even in a business that's going to get disrupted, as banking will be, just like entertainment and telephone companies were disrupted by the internet, those that are smart can take advantage and they can build something

good with this. And they're going to lose some power and leverage, but they can make some good money out of this. So I don't think anyone's out to get Bitcoin right now. I think people are kindly evaluating it and thinking about what opportunities it can bring. And I think that's the best approach. Would you pull up? About the taxes, because I guess there's this whole thing going on that people need to claim the stuff, the purchases or the money that they get from Bitcoin on your taxes, but the IRS hasn't said how to do it yet. Well, I mean, I've discussed this with my accountants and they gave me a pretty straightforward formula. If I earn income on Bitcoin, I mark how many dollars it was at the time, and I pay income taxes on that just like anything else.

I've invested in some Bitcoin. If I hold it for less than six months, I'll declare short-term capital gains. More than a year, I'll long-term capital gains and pay the difference. I mean, that's basically how I would work with euros. That's how I'm going to work with Bitcoin. You're saying how I'm going to work with Bitcoin. The key word, what you're saying, how you're going to, that's what's interesting about this, is you actually haven't started doing that yet because you've only been starting to get paid fully in Bitcoin over the last few months. So this is fairly experimental even for you. You're basically at the cutting edge of this. Right. So, I mean, there are people who

have already filed taxes a few times and they've used the same approach. I'm going to be filing income taxes in Bitcoin for the first time for 2013. But I mean, I'm discussing it with accountants and they think it's pretty straightforward. And I think the IRS will give us guidance before April. And the reason I think they will is because the IRS is interested in making revenue. And what better way to make revenue from Bitcoin than to simply explain exactly how people should pay their taxes on it so we can. Things are going to get really weird if this takes off. They're already weird and it already took off. You think? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, kind of, but I don't know anybody who's using it all the time. I mean, you might say it's if you're

involved in these online groups, but the actual percentage of people that are using bitcoin on a regular basis what is it one half of one half of one percent i mean is maybe there's there's probably um you know several million is it over 10 less than 10 in this country no worldwide but most of it's in this country there's there's at least a million people in this country that are using bitcoin on a regular basis well that i don't know uh and it's in this country. There's at least a million people in this country. That are using Bitcoin on a regular basis. Well, that I don't know. And it's not easy to find out. But what I do know is that... But for it to be taking off is what I'm saying. Well, so what I think about in terms of taking off, this has been around for five years.

It's been a very stable and secure network that has preserved or increased in value. At the same time, people have gradually improved the technology. Now we've got this whole raft of startups that are doing innovation and delivering better and better products around it. More and more merchants are doing it. And most importantly, it's gone global. It's now being used in dozens of countries around the world. And the network is large and getting larger every day. So all of those conditions remind me exactly of what the internet was in 1992. Again, most people didn't hear about it until 94, 95. And at that point, you had people go on the morning show and say, you know, is internet the email or what's this ad sign? And they were having that conversation,

but it had already been growing quite rapidly. I think that's where we are with Bitcoin. My mom is not going to do Bitcoin on her own for another six or seven years. Most people won't hear much about it for the next two years. They're going to hear about it occasionally. But in the meantime, it's been building momentum and getting better. And I think it's already arrived. Certainly the invention behind it, which has also spawned many other currencies, you can't un-invent that invention. So in whatever form, and if it's not this Bitcoin currency, which I think is already pretty damn strong, that same invention can be repeated and improved, just like the internet.

The first early versions were really, really clunky. And gradually it improved. And keep in mind, currency is just the first application. So if you were on the internet and you only knew email, you couldn't even imagine what the web would be like, let alone social media or MP3s or digital music and video. Internet still, the Bitcoin is still like that. We've got the Bitcoin currency, which is just like email. And it's the basic application.

Now companies are building the other applications. And it's getting really exciting. So I think we've got a bit to go until we're mainstream, but I think it's already catching on. Now, in other countries, the government has been not so sweet about use of Bitcoin.

And there's an article that came out just a few hours ago from Russia. The Russian's an article that came out just a few hours ago from Russia. The Russian central bank said that Bitcoin users could face jail time. They did. Yeah. It's up there. It's actually, was it in time magazine?

This is off Ria Novosky. All right. Lovely. It also says, you know, that other countries have done the same thing, including China. And I mean,

what if you use Bitcoin and then, you know, two years from now, they say it's. And I mean, what if you use Bitcoin and then, you know, two years from now, they say it's illegal. I mean, this is crazy. This was released right before we started the podcast. A couple hours before we started this podcast, they released this story. So this is fairly breaking news. So I haven't seen the story. What I can say, first of all, if it's saying that it's the same in China, they're wrong. So that makes me wonder what else they're wrong about. But in China, they banned central banks and other banking institutions from holding Bitcoin on their asset ledger. They didn't ban people from trading. In fact, Bitcoin is like 60% or more of the trading happens in China.

They didn't ban people from using it. It's perfectly legal to use it there as well. I think it might be an exaggerated headline, but even if it isn't, if Russia bans Bitcoin, I think that probably ends up hurting Russia more than Bitcoin. Yeah. China has limited Bitcoin use for its citizens, apparently. Yeah. It's on a few different... Yeah. China also limits internet use for its citizens, but that doesn't devalue the internet. I mean, that's the point about this. And keep in mind, there's also a matter of

due process of law, and there's also a matter of different legal structures. So, for example, in India, the first reaction of the regulators was, well, if it's not specifically licensed and permitted, it's not legal. Their legal system's attitude is, we say it's legal,

it's legal. If we haven't said anything about it, then it's illegal, right? You need a license. So it's the inverse of U.S. law. But, you know, certainly here in the U.S., I'm certainly not worried about it being banned here because there is a lot of legal precedent for private currencies in this country. And there's constitutional protections and there's companies that can defend themselves against that. We have a lot of people that listen to this podcast from other countries. It's one of the reasons why I wanted to bring that up, the Russia story. But to point out that this is not a universally accepted thing as far as governments and the ambivalence of

American banks that they've shown, American politicians, this may not be the case in other countries. Was this Bank of Russia issues warning on digital currencies? Well, you know, Russia is an incredibly suppressive place. We know that. You know, we know what's going on with them and gay people. I mean, it's a really... It's appalling. Very strange, backwards country in terms of a lot of the things that they think

and a lot of the ways that they behave as a nation. And, you know, it's basically also run by one gangster. It's not a country of laws, that they think and a lot of the ways that they behave as a nation. And, you know, it's basically also run by one gangster. It's not a country of laws, that's for sure. Well, I mean, without a doubt, Putin, whether he's a great leader or not, is a gangster. You know, he's just a super awesome one at it. He's running a country. He used to be the president. Stepped down, put a puppet government in place, and then became the president again.

I mean, the whole thing is magical. And then rode around on a horse, bare-chested, in splendor. Yeah, that was pretty crazy and weird. He does a lot of weird things. Him and Obama were, they were both conflicted. They were in some area, and they were conflicted as far as, like, when they could use the gym. They weren't allowed to use the gym together

for some fucking reason. Like, as if Putin and Obama can't work out in the gym together. Do you know how fucking crazy that is? Dude, I'll be on the Stairmaster, you hit the weights. Is that cool? No, they can't be in the room together. They're afraid that Putin might beat them over the head with a fucking club or something.

While Obama was in the gym working out, Putin jumped in the fucking lake outside the gym. So in clear view of Obama and his fucking elastic bands that he's doing his little aerobic stretches with, Putin's swimming in a fucking lake. Freezing cold lake like a man. Like a bare-chested savage in an Old Spice commercial. A Russian Old Spice master. Unbelievable.

They're just pissed off about Alaska still. Did you ever hear that old story about how they sold Alaska to us for I think it was like $12 million, and then we bought it from them in the 1800s, 1700s, and then we found so much gold in Alaska that they would have tripled the amount that we paid for Alaska. Just on gold. Just on gold.

Forget the oil and everything else. No, Alaska's amazing. They fucked up. It's way better than Russia. Dummies. They could have had a vacation spot. Yeah, well, Anchorage is the shit, man. It's one of my favorite places I've ever visited.

It's amazing. And the view when you're driving through the mountains. Oh, my God. It's just magical up there. It's incredible. Yeah. I don ever visited. It's amazing. And the view, when you're driving through the mountains, oh, my God. It's just magical up there. It's incredible. Yeah. I don't know. Russia's a weird spot, man.

You know, Russia has had a long, hard history. There's been a lot of horrible things that have happened to the Russian people, both, you know, World War II

and before that, they were occupied by the Mongols for 200 years. I mean, it's just a rough country. And when it comes to their laws, they've got some really fucking shady laws. And real weird attitudes on things, too, man.

They have a habit of shipping people that don't agree with them off to Siberia. Like that one really wealthy oligarch fellow. He was one of the most richest men in Russia. But crossed words with Putin. Putin just sent that motherfucker to jail. Kept him in jail for 10 years and then finally released him.

A massive public outcry. This guy was, you know, they trumped up charges against him, just locked him up in a cage for a decade. Yeah, well, here's the other perspective

on this, which is in places like the U.S., if the government bans something, they go through a very long arduous process. They go through courts. They have to prove their case. They can't just willingly do it. And it takes a long process. And generally, the people kind of agree with it.

Now, in a lot of places in the world, when something is banned by the government, the people go, hmm, maybe I should look into that. So, you know, the fact that it's banned in Russia doesn't necessarily mean that Bitcoin disappears. It simply means that Bitcoin is more of an underground currency in that place. And people have a lot less respect for laws that are arbitrary and capricious. So in countries where you have weak rule of law and you have rule of people, correspondingly, the people don't pay much attention to those. You know, a lot of things are illegal in Russia, including, you know, buying and selling dollars on the black market, and you can do it on every corner in Moscow.

Yeah, isn't it essentially illegal to be gay? I mean, what are the laws on gay people? They're incredibly restrictive, right? Yeah, I don't know what the... It's not illegal to be gay, but I think it's more... There are still sodomy laws, and there are still bans on public displays and things like that.

Of affection? It's really... Or even symbols. They arrested someone on the Sochi parade route for holding a rainbow flag. It was disgusting. That's hilarious. The gays have taken over the rainbow.

I love that. I mean, rainbows when we were kids, it's like fucking leprechauns, pot of gold, you know, beautiful sunshine after the rain, and now it's gay. How the fuck did they do that? You get arrested for having a fucking rainbow shirt on? How about I'm just a fan of rainbows? What if there's a rainbow shirt and you got a leprechaun at the end of it? What do they say then?

If you have a rainbow shirt on, a leprechaun, and a fan of rainbows. What if there's a rainbow shirt and you got a leprechaun at the end of it? What do they say then? If you have a rainbow shirt on a leprechaun and a pot of gold. I'm sure you get to argue that's in court about three months after you're arrested after spending three months

in a dungeon. Yeah, if. So, yeah. Well, you have butt sex while you're in there so it might be great. Well, that's the old Lenny Bruce joke.

You know, that was like one of the classic Lenny Bruce jokes. I don't understand why they would... The laws against homosexuality, dig, they take a guy who's gay and they arrest him and they put him in jail with a bunch of men who want to have sex with him. That was Lenny Bruce? Lenny Bruce.

Oh, wow. Yeah, that was a classic. That was one that people stole and they didn't even realize they stole it. Yeah. Because a lot of people sort of recognize that. It's like when I was an open mic night comedian, I lived in Boston. Boston is, of course, south of New Hampshire.

And New Hampshire had a license plate that said live free or die. And, of course, the old classic story about license plates is that they were made by prisoners. So, like, ten guys came up with that joke independently that live free or die. Well, the problem with that is, you know, they're made by prisoners. That's one of those things. Yeah. Bitcoin.

What? Where did we go? We went off track. Went into the woods. Is there any kind of insurance or a company that's going to back up bitcoin like an insurance company kind of like you know when a bank gets robbed sure yeah uh actually um as in many areas of kind of emerging markets one of the first to move in is lloyds of london which have historically been involved in in types of insurance that other companies won't necessarily offer first and introduce to the new market.

So there is an organization in the UK that will take, where you can store Bitcoin and then have it insured by Lloyds of London for a specific fee and they'll protect it from theft. But here's the interesting thing. That's a fairly limited approach to it, but what you can do with Bitcoin is you can take insurance contracts and the guarantees of insurance companies and embed them into the transaction system. So now you could have, for example, let's say when you go and buy something on eBay and you do a PayPal transaction, and they give you the ability to do escrow. So if the product never arrives at your doorstep, you can get your money back, right?

Now when you do that, you have to use PayPal escrow. You don't really have a choice. When you do that with Visa, you have to use Visa escrow. On Bitcoin, you can pick an escrow provider and have them add their own key into the transaction. Now they're going to be your escrow, and you chose them. You can pick from a market market of escrow companies and they can do it without actually holding your money, simply by putting an extra key in the transaction and either authorizing it or not. I see. So it opens up all of these possibilities

for new forms of insurance, new forms of escrow, new forms of financial protections that couldn't be done with traditional money. There was news just out that the Jamaican bobsled team, this wasn't from Bitcoin, but it was a Dogecoin or whatever it's called, raised $30,000 for this year's Olympics just the other day. Yeah. And I mean, here's the other story that's not told very often, which is the charity

aspect. In study after study after study, looking both at charitable organizations and user profiles and questionnaires, Bitcoin users have said repeatedly that the number one thing they do with their Bitcoin is donate or give them away. Charity is very active on the Bitcoin blockchain, on the Bitcoin network. Just recently, Bitcoiners raised a ton of money for the hurricane in the Philippines. There's a number of charitable organizations helping the homeless in Florida. There's other organizations doing the same in San Francisco, all based around Bitcoin. So there's this incredible charitable giving spirit in it, and we're seeing that replicate with other coins too. One of the other interesting ones is the Wikileaks recently announced that the vast majority of their donations now come

in cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Litecoin. This is fascinating because on certain payment networks, you can't donate to Wikileaks, right? You can't donate to Wikileaks with PayPal. You can't donate to Wikileaks with Visa. They ban't donate to Wikileaks with Visa. They ban you from doing that, and that's how they've cut off the funding of that organization. Yet at the same time, on some of those payment networks, you could donate to the Ku Klux Klan. Now, that doesn't represent my principles,

and I have a big problem with that. Well, with Bitcoin, you can, because you simply can donate to whoever you want. You can just send Bitcoin to any address. And as a result, Wikileaks has seen a rise in the donations they receive through Bitcoin. But a lot of other organizations too. There's a lot of charitable giving. There's a lot of nonprofit organizations using Bitcoin.

This is a fascinating time. How many other Bitcoin-like alternatives are available? And do you feel that those are competition for Bitcoin? Are they just as valid as Bitcoin? Is there room for a bunch of cryptocurrencies? What's the attitude about that? Generally speaking, the term for alternative currencies is altcoins. Some of them are alternative. Some of them are more competitive with Bitcoin. All of them are based on the same invention. So what this shows is that the underlying invention of how to do computational agreements on the network, that invention has spawned all of these other currencies. Some of them are very innovative. Some of them are just fads

and memes, and some of them are pump-and-dump schemes. So there's a whole range. One of the interesting things that this has created is that in the past, money was trusted and had value because not many people could create it. And so we trust governments to create money, and money has value because only governments can create money. Now, because anyone can create money, how you give it value depends on other things. That's actually a good lesson, because government money doesn't really have that much value in a lot of places either. It's just an illusion that somehow that makes it valuable. In the case of Bitcoin, what makes Bitcoin valuable is the enormous amount of investment, both in terms of resources, in terms of the computing equipment that people have bought, in terms of the invested companies that are in it, and the people

who work in it. Other coins have slightly different variations of the same theme, and some of them are based on memes, internet memes. But I see a future where a five-year-old at school could use a web browser to build a coin in an afternoon and launch it among their friends. So will there be more coins? Yes, tens of thousands of them. And will those coins have value? Probably not. No more than baseball cards or Pokemon or Tamagotchi. But within an environment with young people, you're going to have people who create them for trading purposes and as memes and fads. And so they'll have a certain kind of value, just not monetary value. So you have to evaluate which coins have monetary value based on what's running behind them.

You know, the Bitcoin economy has an actual economy behind it. It has merchants, it has retail transactions, it has startup companies that are investing and developing things with it. Some of these other coins have some of those things. Some of them have none of those things. But is there a risk of Bitcoin being like the MySpace of cryptocurrencies when you get off to this big head start and you're way ahead of the game, but there's holes in your game and Facebook comes in and steals all your people? So one thing to realize is that money is a lot more sticky than a social site. And when people invest their skills and expertise and companies into a certain cryptocurrency,

that carries a lot of weight. So Bitcoin has already achieved a very high level of network effect, which means that the more people are on it, the more people it attracts, the more people are on it, the more people it attracts. But at the same time, because it's building a capital base, that makes it very difficult to unseat Bitcoin. I think what we'll end up seeing is one or two major currencies, Bitcoin is probably going to be the biggest. And then two or three or four or five secondary currencies that do some kind of niche thing that's useful for some group that Bitcoin can't do or won't do because it's anti-technical.

For example, Bitcoin has reverse inflation, deflation, because there's a fixed supply. So over time, the value is gradually going to increase, right? Other people have created coins where if you don't spend them, you lose a bit, which is like inflation. So Bitcoin is not going to be able to copy that and take that feature and say, hey, that looks good, let's do it too. But for a lot of other things, when an alternative coin invents something new, Bitcoin can simply pick it up and run with it too. Bitcoin hasn't stopped moving. It was invented in 2008 and five years of innovation have gone into it and the level of innovation is accelerating.

So I think there's a lot of room for a lot of coins in this space. And not all of them are going to have value, but some of them will have value. So are there any that stand out? I know Dogecoin, D-O-G-E coin, is one that keeps getting brought up to me to talk to you about on the internet. What about Kanye West's coin? You know, Kanye West has a coin. So I think there are a few coins that have interesting characteristics.

They implement new features. They do things slightly better or slightly different in some ways than Bitcoin. Like what? What do they do better? Well, for example, one example is Litecoin. And what Litecoin does is it has a different way of having the agreement on the network, which requires more memory on your computer and less CPU. That makes it more level. At the same time, it does transactions at a different pace. Instead of every 10 minutes, it does fewer minutes for per block. I think it's two and a half and then you have a larger number of total coins. So it's a few tweaks. The idea is if Bitcoin is gold, Litecoin is silver.

But that's the general competitive environment. Now beyond that, Dogecoin is in fact, or Dogcoin or Doggycoin, I'm not quite sure how it's pronounced, is an enhancement on the original idea of Litecoin. So it took that and then twisted it a bit more. And then you've got this whole list of other coins. Some of them are interesting. One discovers prime numbers, which are useful in mathematics. Another one uses a different peer-to-peer system. Another one is more programmable. One of the new coins that's come out now, Ethereum, One of the new coins that's come out now, Ethereum, allows each transaction to be full code for programming language.

All of these may have interesting characteristics. And then, you know, Kanye West coin, whatever. Hey, man, don't dismiss it. No, I mean, it's great. Whatever becomes the gold standard. First of all, they got sued, I think, or they got cease and desist because it had nothing to do with him. or they got cease and desist because it had nothing to do with him. But one of the interesting things is that we don't know. If one of these catches on, who knows? Why not?

A lot of things in life started as a joke and then became huge things that became embedded in the culture. Like Kanye West. So let me ask you this. What about these massive fluctuations in value? Like day-to- day, intense fluctuations? Yes. Very disconcerting to people that are looking for a stable investment when you see, I mean, several hundred percent, right? What is the worst day or the best day as far as the variation? So I think the best day was maybe two and a half years ago, which minus minus 40 or minus 50 percent in a day that was a really big crash and

it took it to from above 30 to below a dollar um and then there was another crash around 100 and then there was another one around 266 and then there was another one around a thousand and so we're now kind of in a relatively stable band uh between 800 900 somewhere there okay explain but here's the point over time these uh little hiccups get narrower and narrower and here's why they occur if you look at bitcoin the total market capitalization if you take all of the bitcoins that exist times the value that they have on the market today it's about a $10 billion market. $10 billion market might sound like a lot.

Certainly if it was a tech stock, it would be a nice-sized tech stock. But as a currency, it's puny. There are hundreds of countries that have bigger monetary base for their currency, and this is an international currency. It's small. So what happens is this is a shallow pool of liquidity. And when you have a shallow pool of liquidity like this with a few markets that are not very efficient, the end result is that every time someone sneezes, all of the liquidity sloshes around and you get these fluctuations. But as it gets bigger in size, the waves get smaller, right? So it's not as volatile. And if you look at it,

if you plot it on a graph and you plot the volatility, you'll see that every year it's getting less and less and less and less and less volatile. Now, if at some point it became large, you know, the reason currencies like the US dollar are not very volatile is because if you think of a 14 trillion dollar economy it's like a titanic it takes you know three miles to turn 10 degrees right so they're much more stable because they have weight behind them and inertia and even if you want to change it you tweak something now and it changes in six months because it takes time to filter through the economy meanwhile think of bitcoin it's like a little zodiac boat next to Titanic, bouncing up and down in the waves. Very nimble, but volatile. Over time, as it gets

bigger, then the waves get smaller by comparison. Okay. What is the cause of these fluctuations to a financial dunce like myself? What causes? How can it be worth X amount and then half that in a day? So let me start by answering the implicit question of how does it get its value? Who sets the price? So it's a free market. And so if you go and try to buy Bitcoin online at the moment, and you say, I'm going to pay 800 for it, and someone says yes. And then during the day, the vast volume of people are buying and selling for around $100, $800. Great, that's the price of Bitcoin. It's whatever people are paying to buy and sell Bitcoin. And so every time the order changes, you know, if suddenly you can't find anyone to buy your Bitcoin at $800, you're going to discount it a bit and discount

until you find someone who's going to buy it. And then that's the new price. So it will go down a bit. But if you are finding people easily to buy your Bitcoin, then you increase the price a bit. So it goes up a bit, just like the stock market. Who sets the price of IBM? No one. It's whatever the last deal was on IBM stock. So how is that not make it vulnerable for the same pump and dump issues that you're experiencing with all these other cryptocurrencies? Well, it does make it vulnerable, but the point is there's still a fixed amount of Bitcoin. So right now that small fixed amount of Bitcoin with very big changes, a media news piece comes out and it's like, Chinese people are buying Bitcoin. And it goes really high. Everybody gets really excited. This is it. Bitcoin's breaking through.

Then the next week, Central Bank of China won't let banks hold Bitcoin. Down we go. Every piece of good news pushes the price up suddenly. Every piece of bad news knocks it down suddenly. It seems like really manipulative financial experts would be able to move it left and right to their whim in order to profit off of it. Yeah, and there's probably a bit of that going on. Ooh, that scares me. But I can tell you that there's a lot more of that going on in every other market. So that's the interesting thing here. We now know that LIBOR, the interest rates in the London bank system, has been fixed for years, and that's the basis for most interest rates. We know that the gold market's fixed. We know that the stock markets they're doing front-running on high-frequency transactions, those are fixed. Every single market out there is currently rigged.

playing within these markets with fiber optic connections to this main data center, and they're three feet closer than the other server and can get that transaction in four nanoseconds sooner, our front-running transactions are benefiting, are profiting from that distance. And these markets are rigged. You go in with your little brokerage account and you trade some IBM and you think you're playing the game. You're the dunce in the room because you don't know who the dunce in the room is. What you're talking about with automated transfers like that

where you're dealing with nanoseconds. High-frequency trading, as it's called, or algorithmic trading. Unbelievably fascinating stuff. I mean, literally they have racks trying to get closer to the rack where the transactions are happening until data centers had to say, no matter where you are in the room, you're getting 300 feet of fiber, and if it's coiled at the bottom of your rack, or if it's

stretched out, you're still going to have to go, you know, so that everybody gets the same deal. But right now, for example, all of the banks are playing this game. How can fast can you do a transaction? So what I'm saying is, yes, there is manipulation in the Bitcoin market, but What I'm saying is, yes, there is manipulation in the Bitcoin market, but the manipulation is on the stock, on the exchange rate that happens on a day-to-day basis, but it's not on the supply of money. Whereas in the real economy, the stock market, the New York Stock Exchange, not only is the market rigged and not only is the market being manipulated, but the currency itself is rigged and being manipulated.

The Fed is printing money and handing it to the banks. So the lesser of two evils. It's definitely the lesser of the two evils. And also the larger it gets, the harder it is for outsiders to manipulate it, right? Because they don't control the levers of power of the currency. There are no levers and that's the beauty of it. So you create a system that doesn't have levers to control the currency. So all they can control is the price and manipulate it. But that's a dangerous game to play long term. Because if the market turns against you, you lose a lot of money too. So it's currently worth, how much is a Bitcoin worth in American dollars? So one place to look up is bitcoinaverage.com. And that shows you the average across dozens of exchanges all around

the world at the moment it's uh 700 hang on one bitcoin is 784 us dollars on average at the moment and that's fairly stable because you were talking about it at 800 before so it's pretty close for the last month it's been in that band. We have seen some wild swings. But it seems to be stabilized around that level now, which, by the way, is three times the level it had stabilized before the big bounce. And how much Bitcoin is actually available out there in the world? So I'd have to look that up. I would say about 11 million or so have been created so far.

And there's a constant creation of these? Every 10 minutes, 25. And this constant creation will eventually not just level off, but one day stop. Yes. Now, what happens then? Well, the thing is, it starts operating more like a precious metal, which is that, you know, once supply of a precious metal gets restricted, it increases in value. But the one difference is that a precious metal, you can only shave so thin, you can't cut it into smaller units, and it's difficult to transport and all of that. Whereas Bitcoin,

you can divide it into 100 million subunits. So basically, instead of the money in your pocket, losing value over time, because the central government is diluting it, it's getting concentrated because more people want to use it and there's not enough around. So it gains value in your pocket. And that's a deflationary currency. It creates some interesting savings opportunities. Where do you see this going? What do you see like the future 100 years from now?

What do you think Bitcoin's place in the world is going to be? I think I can make certain predictions for sure. And I can make other predictions with absolute 90% margin, which means I'm pulling it out of my ass. So let me tell you one I can make for sure. Cryptocurrencies will be part of our financial future, period. Doesn't matter what form they take, this invention has been invented. It will change finance, it will change banking, and it might not be Bitcoin.

I think it will, but it might not be Bitcoin, but it will still be a cryptocurrency. The idea of having a mathematical currency based on a distributed peer-to-peer network happened. The invention happened. You can't stop people from coming up with variations of it. You can't easily shut it down. If you shut down one, a hundred others are going to pop up in its place. Now, at the same time, I think Bitcoin has a very good chance of being the one that was good enough, that grew fast enough and gained enough traction that it will actually have, as a store of value, value for a very long time. Now, didn't someone sell a house in Canada through Bitcoin?

We've seen transactions as big as $150 million. By the way, guess what the fee was? What? Zero. Whoa. $150 million? Transferred in seconds for zero fee. Whoa. Who got $150 million in Bitcoin? Justin Bieber, that crazy fuck.

Who did that? Were they drunk? We have no idea. They must have been drunk as fuck. We don't know. Look at their phone. What? Look at the text messages you made when you were drunk,

and then look at your Bitcoin folder. I did what? You'd think you would know if somebody spent that much money using Bitcoin because they would, you know, as a Bitcoin user would probably scream, I just spent $1.5 million. That's why it's so weird for me to think that like the guy that created it,

no one knows what he looks like. Some guys spent $1.5 million, but no one knows who this guy is. It just seems so weird to me. Well, I mean, here's the thing. You don't know what's happening in the banking system today. People are sending billions of dollars around. Yeah, but for Bitcoin users, it's almost like buying a cell phone in your advertising.

Like, this is the best cell phone ever. I love it. You know, your cell phone sucks because they're almost the most vocal about using Bitcoin that you would think somebody that's going to spend 1.5 would immediately go to online. What do you mean? Hold on. Tell the world I have all this money and they're spending it. I mean, that's a dangerous thing to online. What do you mean? Hold on. Tell the world I have all this money and I'm spending it. That's a dangerous thing to say.

Why would you think that that's what they would do? And if they didn't do that, it wouldn't be real. No, I didn't say it's not real. It just seems so suspicious that there's so many... See, my biggest problem, because people have been trying to get me on Bitcoin for a long time, is things like this,

where there's so much mystery to it. Especially if you follow the conspiracies of the guy that created it. And you hear reports like somebody just spent all these millions of dollars using Bitcoin. That's not what he said. He said someone bought $1.5 million worth of Bitcoin. No, no, no. Someone transferred it into $1.5 million? A transaction.

There was a transaction from one address to another address for $150 million in a single transaction. Keep in mind. Wait a minute, $150 million? Yes. And these happen every second. Not that big, but transactions happen all the time. And so if you were watching the stream and transaction, you're like, you know, $10, $1,000, $500, $10,000, $150 million. You're like, what? Well, and you can see that transaction because it's on the public ledger

and it did happen and it has been verified and the transaction went through and they paid zero fee. So this $150 million transaction was between two people. It was between two addresses. It might've been person moving it from one of their own accounts to one of their own accounts or giving it to someone else. But it's still $150 million American dollars worth of Bitcoin. It was about $146,000, $145,000 Bitcoin. And Bitcoin's worth $800 each? Yeah. So at the time it was almost $1,000. So yeah, it's about $150 million.

Wow. Which in the big scheme of things, by the way, in the global monetary system, is peanuts. But it's not. But for Bitcoin, it's not. But for an individual user, though. If it's either an individual user or if it's a corporation. It might be a corporation. It might be the government.

When we seized Silk Road, the government, meaning we. You're working for the government, man. The government kept that, right? They're actually... I don't think they want to keep it for too long, and I'm not sure they're allowed by law to keep it for too long. So what they've announced they're going to do

is they're going to sell it. They're going to sell Silk Road? No, they're going to sell the Bitcoins they seized. And they're going to sell them on some kind of market or auction, which is great, because it's going to create some discount opportunities. Well, that's funny.

So Bitcoin was a key player in that whole Silk Road scandal. And for folks who don't know what Silk Road was, it was a website that allowed you to buy a lot of illegal things online. And some of it was purchased through Bitcoin. And those things were as illegal as drugs or as guns. There was a lot of different things, right? Well, it was mostly drugs. And just today, 53 minutes ago,

or whatever, the guy that those two people got arrested for that. They had a company that was laundering money using Bitcoins. Allegedly. Allegedly selling Allegedly. Allegedly selling Bitcoin to someone who sold Bitcoin to users who bought drugs.

Right. This is not exactly money laundering for drugs. Let's be clear. The allocation, I read the indictment on the plane, and I'm not a lawyer, but what it said is that allegedly these people sold Bitcoin to someone who then resold it on the Silk Road to other users, some of whom used it to buy drugs. So how could someone be responsible for...

That's a pretty... That's a three-hop allegation. And in my mind, if that's the standard, then at least half of Wall Street should be in cuffs, right? Yeah. Now, it's allegedly. So let's keep that in there. Yeah, we've used many allegedlys. It's very important.

Well, there's a lot of exaggerated claims and statements in prosecution indictments. When you're a career prosecutor and you write up the indictment and decide to take it to the grand jury, you're not going to just write the littlest thing you do. You're going to make it look like every person you arrest is the worst person in the world and has

massive crimes going on. Yeah. Which means that reading that and seeing how much of a weak case it is, you know, allegedly sold to someone who allegedly sold to users who allegedly bought drugs. Um, I don't know. It seems insane. It's almost like your employee buys drugs with money that you paid him, so you are in trouble for him buying drugs. I'm not a lawyer. I'm not going to figure out what exactly they're going.

It's a direct sort of connection, the same direct sort of connection. Let's see them try and prove it. I mean, that's the justice system. You have to prove it. Yeah, but it's so scary that someone's freedom is on the line for something as ambiguous as that. Especially when you're dealing with someone selling Bitcoin to someone who then used that Bitcoin to buy drugs.

Once it's out of your hands. What's scary is that you've got a 24-year-old sitting in jail for this, and you've got the 55-year-old CEO of HSBC who didn't even resign after being fined hundreds of millions of dollars for laundering billions. Yeah. What the fuck government? Don't make us use the internet to run everything. That's going to happen, right?

Yeah, I mean this is actually probably owned by the government and they're going to use it in voting in the future and like you said, it's probably going to be... So here's the thing, it doesn't matter if it's owned by the government. Look, listen, the government invented the basic protocols behind the internet, and then engineers and geeks took it and turned it into a global network. And even if the government had invented the math behind Bitcoin, we know how it works.

It's math. And we're using it to do things that the government doesn't necessarily control that well. So if they did invent it, that was a bad idea on someone's part. As it was the internet. But the whole point is that the underlying technology, there's nothing mysterious about it. You can read the source codes. You can see how it works. You can understand how it works.

And you're not trusting anyone specific. You're just trusting that you understand how it works. And it's math. I mean, that's the beauty of it. And that's why people are adopting it so easily, is because there's no one behind the curtain. Yeah, it's also, it's sexy. It's the new kid on the block. It's the new exciting thing.

It's the, as you said, the internet of money. Yeah. And people want to be the first adopters. They want to get on it first. What else is happening in this economy? I mean, really, let's think about it. What else is happening in this economy? Other than the military? Other than more derivatives

piled on top of more derivatives by the banks? Pretty much everything else is at a standstill. Except marijuana. The money from marijuana. Yeah, well, that's the one thing in this economy that's exploded in the places where it's been introduced and allowed to operate in the free market. And ironically, the situation there was that they weren't letting those people who were selling the marijuana put their money in banks.

The government has since amended that and said that they're going to now start allowing these people who run these medical marijuana stores to put their money in banks, which is a huge victory. And I think, you know, ultimately, it's unconscionable to do anything else because you're allowing an environment where crime, violent crime, is most likely going to take place because you are making people targets. If you're not allowing them to bank, you're making sure they have massive amounts of cash on them

on a regular basis, and they're going to get targeted. It's just a matter of time. You're going to create victims of violent crime. So I'm glad they decided to not do that. But it's a perfect example of the kind of fuckery that's involved in our government, that you could have these people that did pass a law allowing something to be legal, and yet still those people are kept from and prohibited from putting that money in banks it's nuts it's madness i mean the broader scheme of this is understanding that there's ways to deal this through law including the people's propositions in these states and then there's a a lot of these extra-legal shenanigans that happen where suddenly someone gets audited for a dozen years in a row.

And J. Edgar Hoover had people audited every year of their life because he didn't like them. And some of those practices continue to this day. Now, I would at least like to see the rules followed. I mean, that's the whole point of this country, isn't it? It's a rule of law equally applied to all. At least if we know what the rules are, you can follow them or choose not to and then face the consequences. But if you don't even know what the rules are because people make them up as they go along, that's not a good place to live. Yeah. If a business, a private business acted the way the IRS did as far as

handing out audits to people that were political opponents, handing out audits to people that were personal opponents of people that were in power. If a private company acted out that way, they would be guilty of all sorts of fucking violations. It'd probably be somebody in jail. I mean, it would be a really big issue if you found out. But they've been auditing people just to fuck with them for the longest time. It's a pretty gross and scary thing. Well, the good news is they're not auditing Bitcoiners. And so far, we have a nice relationship with the IRS, and they're looking for ways to help us pay our taxes. And I'm looking forward to that time. I'm looking forward to filing my taxes and paying them this year. I'm fascinated. I mean, I pay them every year.

Paying taxes specifically for the Bitcoin earnings I've had this year. I'm fascinated by that. I mean, I pay them every year. Paying taxes specifically for the Bitcoin earnings I've had this year. I'm fascinated. I'm fascinated to see that. This Nakamoto guy, how do you say his name? Satoshi?

Satoshi Nakamoto. Satoshi Nakamoto. Have you met this cat? No one's met Satoshi Nakamoto. It's not real. That's what I'm saying. Well, I mean, there's a possibility.

No one's met him. There's a possibility that, well, here's what we know We know what he wrote and based on what he wrote We know Figure out his name by changing it to numbers and doing it backwards and googling stuff and with so funny if you type type in His name backwards and a Google it leads you to this whole real long Discussion on some board about bitcoins and I'm like stealing them and stuff like that it's really weird okay nice stuff please continue i'm sorry about him no no no the the the thing about satoshi nakamoto is

we he's written a scientific paper right and before that paper and after that paper he participated in the community for two and a half years having conversations about how to do this so what we know is he's a scientist he's a scientist heavily involved in cryptography, in economics, and in digital currencies, which is a space that's been thriving for 20 years now. And he, she, they found a way to solve a specific problem. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. He, she, they. So Satoshi Nakamoto might not be a person. Satoshi Nakamoto might be a woman. Satoshi Nakamoto might be a group of two or three people collaborating under a pseudonym to create a scientific solution. It doesn't

matter. They invented science. Oh, for sure it doesn't matter, but aren't you fascinated? Oh, I'm totally fascinated, but at the same time, here's the lesson we've learned. Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to the people, and they tied him to a fucking rock and had an eagle eat his liver every day.

Satoshi Nakamoto gave money to the people and he disappeared because he's smart enough or she's smart enough not to get tied to a rock. That's the bottom line. I don't look into it because I think only bad things

can come out of outing Nakamoto. I see what you're saying. They get smeared immediately, right? And there's nothing good that will come out of it because at the end of the day, since they control nothing, and since what they invented is a mathematical solution, it doesn't matter.

So you believe that potentially this group of people or individual person, whatever it was, whichever scenario, whichever sex, that they thought about it in advance. Oh, they said they spent several years working on that. I mean, they were active. But not just the code. I'm talking about the repercussions of their actions.

And they decided to be anonymous in their delivery of this. Well, I think throughout the 90s, a lot of the people involved in digital currency environment, because some of them were working in oppressive, highly oppressive environments. And I'm not, you know, people may be working from Burma or from China or from who knows where. And so it's not a good thing to be doing these with your own name attached.

So a lot of people in this space were involved anonymously to protect their own safety as they were working in digital currencies, basically doing science work in cryptography and mathematics and distributed systems. That's a very sexy part of the story. You can't leave that out anymore. When you tell the story, you've got to tell people that nobody knows if Satoshi Nakamoto is even real.

That's kind of cool. Yeah, it is kind of cool. But, you know, we do know some things about Satoshi. For example, he puts two spaces after every period. Or she. Or she. Or they. Or she. Or they. Or is that guy?

That's Satoshi? How do you know that's not Satoshi? A lot of people have tried to guess, and there's a lot of digital currency scientists and cryptographers, well-known cryptographers, who participated in the creation of many of the aspects of Bitcoin. And people have fingered them and said, you know, maybe that's Satoshi. Maybe that's Satoshi. Maybe they're all Satoshi. I am Satoshi. So this is sort of almost like a Jack the Ripper sort of investigation. Only he didn't kill anyone. He gave science to the people.

Well, I mean in terms of there's so many different theories of who... you ever watch a documentary on... Right. We solve Jack the Ripper's murder, you know, they always find out that it's a totally different god it's a great story i mean you know this person invented a completely new science or people or people and and then disappeared for their own safety and yeah that's pretty cool yeah it is fascinating and it's going to be ripe for conspiracy theories of all kinds to jump out of that and you, you know, I try to focus primarily on the technology because it stands alone. That's the key. It doesn't need any of this. There is a culture, there's a history, there's all of that. And it's fascinating, but the technology just

works and it's simple math and people can read it, understand how it works and then use it. And that's the beauty of it because it doesn't depend on anyone. You don't have to trust Satoshi, you don't have to trust the bank, and you don't have to trust Satoshi. You don't have to trust the bank. And you don't have to trust that someone's not going to mess it up because you can see how it works. That's such a subject that's ripe for conspiracy theorists.

Boy, they're going to jump all over that one. Did you know Bigfoot? They're going to chemtrail the fuck out of that one. Well, yeah, it's already happening. They're going to Tower 7 the shit out of that one. How can we make a connection with Bitcoin and Tower 7? There has to be something. It's all fun.

Tower 7 held the original computer that created Bitcoin. It wasn't done in 2008. It was done in 2001. The NSA, the CEA, and the DEA. I've met that guy. Alex Jones? Oh, was that Alex Jones? I was just guessing.

I've met several guys like that. Yeah, well, there's a lot of those guys. Boy, there's some fucking ferocious conspiracy theorists out there. I'm fascinated by these things. I'm fascinated by these new avenues that our culture starts going down and these incredible avenues and branches of possibility off of these new paths. It's just a really amazing, amazing time in so many ways. And this highlights just this constant repeating subject that comes up with me and my friends

is that the internet has changed everything. Everything. And we've pretended that it's only been a little bit. Oh, so you get email now. What's the big deal? It's monstrous. It's changed my life 100%. Changed the way I think 100%.

Changed my connection with just random human beings. I interact with thousands of random human beings online on a daily basis. And 99.999% of those interactions are positive. Yes, exactly. That's the most beautiful aspect about it. And Bitcoin is just an expression of that. It's a child of the internet. You know, when people say, you know,

the internet now is so co-opted and restrictive that you can't do anything. Well, I can tell you you can because Bitcoin came right out of that and works on that perfectly today. So, you know, Bitcoin is one more thing that happened because of the internet. And now it's turning around. And here's the interesting thing. It allows you to do very small transactions, micro, nano transactions. So, for example, if you want to monetize your podcast and you accepted Bitcoin, and people sent you a tenth of a penny or a penny or a dollar, and you added up over hundreds of

thousands of users, because it doesn't cost much to send, because it's an easy transaction, people will make transactions smaller and smaller and smaller. So suddenly, Bitcoin can fund all of the independent content providers and all of the independent infrastructure providers on the internet and transform the internet again from the inside out. Wow. Like, imagine all of these media companies that have gotten so horribly disrupted because there's basically two media models. If you make content on the internet, you either sell advertising, so you're stuffing junk into the eyeballs of your customers or your ears, and the bigger the company, the more junk that comes out of it, right? Or

you're selling your customer. If the product's free, you're the product, right? Your personal information is what generates the value. So if you're on a social media site that's free, you're the product. And so they're selling your information in order to make money so it's either advertising or selling your information well now there's this third way which is you can do transactions small enough to have value when accumulated in large numbers that you could independently and directly fund content providers and infrastructure on the internet and break the hold of these systems of concentration that advertising and social media have become. Selling privacy and selling advertising,

which require concentration. They require enormous concentration. What do you think if we set up a dedicated Joe Rogan experience Bitcoin server right here, where we do not server, but computer dedicated to just crunching, just out of respect. Just have one running here in the background all the time. Can we go to jail for that? Is that possible?

No, of course not. In fact, at the end of the show, I'd like to help set you up with a wallet on your smartphone, and I'll send you some Bitcoin. I'm not so sure about that. The other question I wanted to ask you about, we spoke about earlier, was net neutrality. Now, that's a huge issue for anyone

who loves the way the internet works and the way the internet does not judge and the internet is freely available to anyone who ports into it at virtually, whatever you pay for your connection, whatever your download speed is. But there's no regulation as far as it being easier for Walmart to get online, or they have more of a percentage of the pipe. Are we concerned about net neutrality being somehow or another compromised by nefarious sources?

Well, I mean, net neutrality suffered a massive setback in the courts just a couple of weeks ago with a decision that allowed Verizon Communications to not be subject to the FCC rule imposing net neutrality. And that sent shockwaves through the industry because the average... How did that go down? What was the case? The internet lost. Well, what was the case? The internet lost. What was the case? The case was the FCC made a rule that said that carriers must support net neutrality, and Verizon sued and had it overturned as unconstitutional,

or outside the mandate of the FCC, to be more accurate. What did Verizon specifically want? Well, we don't know that. They say they want to make the internet better, but they just got the rule that says that they have to treat all traffic equally taken out. And most people don't realize that the reason the internet allows things like Netflix to happen is because they didn't have to ask anyone's permission. Now imagine if when Netflix started, it had to ask Comcast to run its traffic and pay for a premium.

Well, they wouldn't do that because it's a competitor. So of course, they'd crowd them out of the market with exorbitant fees. Net neutrality means that everybody has a fair shake to be heard, and it's up to the end user to decide who they want to listen to. All of the traffic will reach you if you want it as a listener or as a viewer. Now, can they somehow or another limit where the traffic goes to, like what we're seeing in other countries where they have restrictive internet laws? Is that a potential byproduct of this case? I think the biggest threat right now comes to companies like what we're seeing in other countries where they have restrictive internet laws? Is that a potential byproduct of this case?

I think the biggest threat right now comes to companies like Netflix or things like streaming radio and audio systems, Spotify, Pandora, et cetera, whereby service providers who have their own TV streams or their own music streams that are competing are going to make their experience great and Netflix experience somewhat suckier. So they'll limit the bandwidth of Netflix applications. Yeah. They'll choke them. Right.

Right now, I mean, they already do in some cases, but... How do they do that? Well, I mean, all kinds of shenanigans, But I mean, the basic deal is that this FCC rule was trying to establish a legal framework under which they'd be obliged to give equal access to all content. As long as the viewer chose that's what they want to see or they wanted to connect to over the internet, they would connect to that with the same bandwidth that they've bought. You buy bandwidth and you use it for whatever you want, and you don't get better bandwidth if you use their shows than Netflix. Well, once they tried to put that rule in place, the lawsuit started, and now we have a very bad decision that could really, really hamper innovation. A lot of the things that we see today on the internet would not have happened

if net neutrality weren't observed. And the Verizon, for many people who don't realize this, Verizon offers home internet connection as well as 4G and... And TV, most importantly, right? And pay-per-view and video on demand, which means that they're directly competing against other content providers. Yeah, Verizon now has a fiber optic system that's incredibly fast has a fiber optic system that's incredibly fast and connects to you, direct download movies and television shows. There's a lot going on right now as far as Internet-related content, things like Netflix and things like Hulu and Hulu Plus.

These places are now starting to create their own programming as well. It's getting really fascinating because they're not just competing with Verizon. Now they're competing with NBC and CBS and what have you. And if you like that, net neutrality is why it happens. And therefore, we should be defending net neutrality. So what people should do is probably boycott companies that don't support net neutrality. Well, I'm a huge supporter of the EFF, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, that's been fighting for privacy and liberty

and net neutrality on the internet since the early 90s. And they've won several substantial cases, both against organizations like the NSA, but also against service providers that try to abuse their position to prioritize traffic. And they've promoted the idea of an open, independent, transparent, and fair internet for all with equal access for everyone. I mean, that's the thing that's made the internet magic.

And they've been at the forefront of doing that, EFF.org. I'm a huge supporter. That's interesting. Well, we'll look into that and maybe we'll fucking put an EFF sticker on our website or something like that. And you can put it on your webcam, too. They're the same ones who sell those little webcam stickers. Well, those guys are on the ball.

That's something to really be concerned with. It really is. The idea that they could limit your experience, whether it's Netflix or whatever downloadable. Charter does it to Jamie. They won't let him go to Pirate Bay anymore, and I've heard that before. Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly.

He doesn't go to Pirate Bay, you fuck mean to download a legal uh allegedly music legal music legal like nine snails yeah that's uh and if you're in an area where they have a lockdown on on internet providers you know where some people like can only get verizon they're in an area that only gets Verizon. AT&T doesn't reach there. Time Warner doesn't reach there. That sucks. That's so disturbing. And it's so contrary to the trends that we would like to see. So here's one good idea or one good thought that comes out of this.

A lot of the problem right now is that you pay for both of your infrastructure and your content in a single payment to your ISP. Well, with Bitcoin, you could pay the recipient or the content provider directly in tiny, tiny, tiny payments. Dude, you really are the Bitcoin genius. You're Bitcoin Jesus because you – Bitcoin Jesus. He is because he's offering Bitcoin as a solution for everything. Well, I mean it's powerful stuff. Bitcoin can fix that and Bitcoin can fix that, and Bitcoin can fix the internet,

and Bitcoin can fix Verizon. It's almost, and I'm not, it's just, you know, it's almost like evangelistic. Like, it's almost like a pyramid, like when you go to a pyramid-type thing where they're selling, like, no, you know, is there anything you don't like about it? Like, what's the number one thing that you're like,

I hope something changes with this? Is there anything? Yeah, sure. I mean, it's got some scalability issues that are being solved. It's software, so we have to be very careful with the upgrades. But, you know, I mean, compared to the existing form of money we have, I honestly think it's better money and it's a great technology. I've spent 20 years doing security and distributed systems. That's my area of expertise as a professional. So what I love about this is that I can see the elegance of the technology,

and I understand its implications. The last time I felt like this was 1992, and it was because I saw the internet and I saw the elegance of it, and I was out telling as many people as I could, you know, this is really going to change things in ways you don't even expect. And I can't even explain to you yet because it's going to unfold in ways no one anticipates. Because what it does is it democratizes information. So, yes, I'm excited about something that democratizes money. But it's because I understand the underlying technology. You know, I don't profit from talking about this.

I'm able to build a career on it, sure, and I love doing it. But really at the heart of it, I'm a geek. I love the technology, and that passion just comes through. It's obvious. It's obvious that you love it. You light up, and when the word Bitcoin comes out of your mouth, it comes out just covered in love juice. You love it. It's obvious. And it's interesting. You're in a very unique position because you're really juice. You love it. It's obvious. And it's interesting. And it's,

it's, um, you're in a very unique position because you're really at the edge of it. And you're, you're sort of at the front of this ever increasing in mass ship and you're watching it gain momentum. It's gotta be pretty exciting. It's exciting. It's great. It was also terrifying for quite a while. I mean, I've been in this full-time for almost two years, and I can tell you that that was not a very profitable job. What did you do for a living before that? I've been an independent freelancer. I've been starting businesses. I'm an entrepreneur.

When you say independent freelancer, what is your background, your educational background? I'm a computer scientist with a specialization in distributed systems. I've been working in security for just over 18 years in information security systems. So I worked as a consultant, I worked as an advisor, I worked as a chief information officer for companies. I built research companies, I built companies that built internet systems, and I followed the internet. I'm not one of the pioneers of the internet. I was a 16-year-old kid looking over their shoulder as they were doing these things. So I was buried in it when I was young. And so I've worked as an independent professional in this space for many years. And then two years ago, I first discovered Bitcoin.

Then it hit me again a second time. I read the Satoshi paper and I decided this is the job I'm going to do. And right now there is no job, so I'm not going to make any money at it, but I'm going to do this job until it actually becomes a job. And I did that for two years and I almost went bankrupt because there wasn't a job there at the beginning. And now it's a job and it's very exciting. So this is a conscious decision on your part back when it wasn't even profitable.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. You just took this massive chance and stepped out on the edge of the dock. Yes. I invested in several companies. I drained my retirement account. I drained my savings paying my bills until I could generate income doing this. Wow. And I mean, this is not prudent investment.

No. I mean, this is not prudent investment. This is not prudent behavior financially. But as a technologist, as a person who's worked in distributed systems and security and computer systems, I could see that this was an exciting technology and I want to build a career in it. So what I've been doing is swapping money for skills and experience and the opportunity to be on the ground floor. I was too young when the Internet started to be on the ground floor. I was too young when the internet started to be influential in that space. And I see this opportunity as a second opportunity to do that. Now, how did you know that Bitcoin was the solution? What made you so confident that you invested this exorbitant amount of time in Bitcoin? And, you know, back two years ago, the future could not have looked nearly as bright as it looks now.

So the key here was that I was in distributed systems and security. And then the first time I thought, I heard about it, I thought, nerd money. And then the same, like everybody does, right? That's where Brian is right now. That can't possibly work. Then I went back and I read the Satoshi paper. And I grasped the science and it was confusing. And then I read it again and I really grasped the science.

And then suddenly it hit me. Oh my God, this isn't a currency. It's a consensus network. This is the holy grail of distributed systems of the last 15 years. You can do so much more than currency. And once that light bulb went off, all I could see was the possibilities. Oh, well, now that we have this technology, we can do this and this and this, and the currency will do these things for us.

And all of these possibilities unfolded in my head, and it was a really dizzy experience. But I understood the fundamental building blocks looked so much like the early internet. And I knew what structures like that do. They create a network effect. They create this attractive force where it gets more useful, the more people who use it. Network effect was coined first by Bob Metcalf in 1984. He said the value of the network increases exponentially with the addition of each node. Because when you join a network, you don't just gain that value, but by increasing the size of the network, you make it more valuable for everyone else because they have one more person

to connect to, right? And if you keep doing that, it achieves a scale where it starts multiplying. That's how the internet grew. And when you have this magic combination of money for the people that can be sent directly between people that forms a network, those three things came together in my head. I'm like, this is big. And nobody knows it yet. And when you see something that's big and nobody knows it yet, you want to tell everyone. And you want to dedicate a large part of your time to doing this because it's incredibly exciting. Now, how did you initially jump in? I mean, how do you jump in in the infant stages of Bitcoin?

What's the steps that you took to become a part of this? Well, I spent months and months and months reading everything that I could. The scientific papers, the discussions that Satoshi Nakamoto had with the other developers as he developed it. I started reading the code. I started writing code. I started building businesses around it.

I started talking to people. I started meeting up with other Bitcoin enthusiasts. And then as soon as I could, I started buying Bitcoin. And basically have been doing that since. And what does your average day now consist of? Going on podcasts and telling people how awesome Bitcoin is? How often does that come up? So I have a day job.

I'm a technical advisor in a number of Bitcoin startups. I'm the chief security officer for Blockchain Info, which is the largest Bitcoin web wallet in the space. And I work every day as a media pundit, a commentator on Bitcoin. I write code and then I comment about it. And I do interviews all the time because this is something I believe in strongly. I don't get paid for my interviews. I have other jobs that allow me to pay for international travel.

For a long time, that was my savings account until I was able to get other means. Well, you certainly hope to eventually profit off of this. Well, actually, now I'm making income on Bitcoin. So things are stabilized. You know, I'm not a Bitcoin millionaire. I may never be a Bitcoin millionaire, but I know what career I want to do for the next 15 years. Wow. So how did you know that Bitcoin was going to be worthwhile and that so many people are going to jump on the board, jump aboard two years ago? It seems like two years ago.

Well, I didn't know. I mean, what I knew is this is a very elegant technology that had some implications, some geopolitical implications, some cultural implications, some technology implications. And I liked all of those and I was very interested in pursuing it. And at the time, I hoped it was going to get big. And I figured, you know, if it didn't and I didn't get anywhere with it, I could do something else in a couple of years. You got to come on again in a year. I'd love to. Yeah. Let's let this thing cook out there in the crazy world. I mean, we say a year, but the way things are moving. Three months. Yeah. You might be right. It might be. Oh, it's been crazy. Yeah. In terms of what happened in

the last year alone, it's been unbelievable. I mean, we had our first major Bitcoin conference in April in San Jose. And now there's like 100 conferences going on this year. Wow. And there's $150 million transaction. Right. Exactly. And the price was, you know, when I was working on this, the price was $15.

If you asked me last year, did I think Bitcoin would be at a thousand? I said, no. Yeah, maybe in a couple of years. I was surprised too. But you know, it has a way of growing on you. And when it does, it grows as a network and people find it useful and they try it. They understand how it works. It's practical. They grasp the usefulness of it and they start using it. I wish I had you in here when Peter Schiff was in here. I'd be like, sick of Andreas. Tell him what's up.

Maybe he's right. I don't know who's right. You know, I don't generally debate on this because the simple truth is that none of us know. Right. And the reason we don't know is because the tools we have to analyze currencies don't apply because it's a completely different type of currency. It's not a stock. It's not a currency. It's not an asset. It's not a commodity.

It's a bit of everything. So can I tell you what it's going to do in two years? Of course not. I don't know. Nobody knows. What I do know is I understand the technology. And what I see is something elegant and practical. So I'm interested in seeing where this experiment will go, because here's the thing, if it doesn't work, some people lose money. If it does work, we change the world of money forever. And that's a pretty big thing to say, but cryptocurrencies, I think, are here to stay.

They offer an elegant solution to decentralized money. And whether Bitcoin survives or not, I want to see where this is going to go go because it has the possibility of changing a lot of people's lives. Well, it certainly does. I want to see them find that Nakamoto thing. I want to see who it is. I hope they never find it. Yeah, because it's like Bigfoot for you. It's like searching

for Sugar Man for me. I want to find him. It's probably going to be somebody you already know too, like the dude you got at Dell guy or somebody. It's unbelievably fascinating. It's probably going to be somebody you already know, too, like the dude you got a Dell guy or somebody. It's unbelievably fascinating. It's just unbelievably fascinating, especially listening to you describe it. Your passion for it makes it even more fascinating. It's really something that I'm going to keep my eyes on and try to follow.

So I appreciate you coming over here, and I appreciate you giving us your knowledge and spending your time. And I guess I'll set up a wallet on my phone now. Is that what I'm going to do? Yeah, sure. Sure, absolutely. Is it an Android phone? Yes.

Right, okay. So you can download blockchain. And I said before I work for blockchain as the chief security officer. I was a customer long before that, but I think it's one of the better ones. So you download blockchain from your app store, and then you'll get an address, and I can then send you some Bitcoin,

and you'll have it in a few seconds. And if we wanted to put up a computer here, a dedicated computer that runs Bitcoin computations, it wouldn't fuck with us in any way, right? No, not at all. It wouldn't mess with our bandwidth. Just your electricity. It would use up electricity. You can get a little one that's

even a USB stick. They call it like a Klondike. It's a little stick, USB stick. You plug it in and it uses up some electricity and it generates some Bitcoin. You're not going to generate much. Well, I'm not trying to get rich. A buck a month, maybe. It's going to be interesting to play with. That's cool. Bitcoin street cred. That's what I'm looking for.

Yeah, exactly. Alright. Listen, cool. Bitcoin street cred. That's what I'm looking for. Yeah, exactly. All right. Listen, man, this was very enlightening. I'm obviously going to have to read a lot of shit after this. There's so much involved in this subject and so much involved in cryptocurrencies. It's really, really interesting stuff. But I think it's badass, man. And I really respect a guy like you who takes a giant leap like that and, and dives into something and something that you believe in and you get really passionate about it. It's what life is about to me. It's about pursuing passions. And I love the fact that you're really into it. And I really, really

appreciate you coming on here and enlightening us. Thank you so much for, for having me. And, you know, sometimes you, you choose the things you want to do in life, but some of the most interesting things in life, once you find them, you have no choice. I had no choice. I couldn't sleep at night if I wasn't doing this. It's still a choice. It was just such a big draw. But, yeah, I mean, I hope you see, you know, I'm not trying to sell anything.

I'm genuinely passionate about this because I see an elegant solution. Yes. Well, that is where, you know, the choice is. The choice is in being that person who follows their passions. That's inspirational. To me, it's one of the most inspirational things I encounter both online and in the real world is watching people who are passionate about what they do. Right.

You can recognize it in others. Yes. Yeah. It's the only way to live your life. It's so contagious for me. Like, it could be a guy who makes handmade knives you know and grinds the blades and sharpens the handles and you know puts everything together I'm fascinating but I'm fascinated by anything that someone's incredibly

passionate about and so this this Bitcoin thing now is just now it's in there now it's in my list of things I'm fascinated about right well thank you very much so people want to get in touch with you, they can contact you on Twitter. Probably the easiest thing is Twitter. That's the one I can handle the most. Listen, you're going to get swarmed today. Awesome. Try not to pay attention to all those fucking psychos.

It's A-A-N-T-O-N-O-P. That's A-A-N-T-O-N-O-P on Twitter. Andreas, is there anything else? You have a website, Antonopoulos.com. Yeah, sure. That's my media site, and people can book

me for engagements there, but really on Twitter is where I'm most active. My name is pretty easy to Google, and thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Please. It was an honor. I really think we had a crazy internet pioneer in here. Someday we're going to look back on this and say, man, we had Andrew Athenopoulos. I know.

We should have bought that coin and it would have been like Apple stock. Let us know what the fuck he told us not to. We could have had a whole room full of computers, man. We shouldn't have listened to him back then. He didn't have enough faith. Thanks a lot, man. Awesome. Thank you.

Awesome. Really appreciate it. thanks a lot man awesome thank you really appreciate it to everyone else next big date I got coming up

folks is I am in Dallas Texas with Ari Shafir and Duncan Trussell that's March 14th at the Verizon Theater

this weekend this Friday it's sold out I'm in New York but don't try to get tickets because if you do get tickets, you're just supporting scalpers. So unless you find somebody online that's that can't go cause their pussy got wet, but

whatever, do what you got to do folks. Um, so that's the next big one, uh, is, uh, Dallas Verizon theater, March 14th. Can't fucking wait. That's the day before the huge UFC event at Dallas Stadium, which is apparently 50,000 seats or something bananas. So that should be a lot of fun. That's it. Alright, you freaks. We'll be back this week

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