The Pour Over Today - TPO Explains | What is Bitcoin?

Episode Date: April 18, 2026

Readers of The Pour Over pick a topic to have explained, and Jason and Kathleen have to get Joe to understand it in less than 30 minutes… This week, Kathleen and Jason are explaining bitcoin. Looking to support us? You can choose to pay⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Check out our sponsors! We actually use and enjoy every single one. ⁠Cru⁠ ⁠Wild Alaskan⁠ ⁠HelloFresh⁠ ⁠Christian Real Estate Network⁠ ⁠Quince⁠ ⁠Qualia Life⁠ ⁠QAVA⁠ ⁠CCCU⁠ ⁠Upside⁠ ⁠Mosh⁠ ⁠LMNT⁠ ⁠The Missing Messiah⁠ ⁠Compelled Podcast⁠ ⁠I Choose Love⁠ ⁠TPO Corrections Page

Who invented Bitcoin? I mean, no, not me. But wouldn't you like to know? So Kathleen, you're moving. I'm moving, yeah. It's been a crazy couple weeks. What? Yeah, we found a house.

We sold the house, and now we just wait to actually move. Nice. Well, congrats. Thanks. Please don't share my address like you share my phone number. Yeah, we'll be sure to drop Kathleen's physical address in the chat and you can send her gifts. Yeah. Or only for paid subscribers.

Yeah, you could, or we could give your digital wallet and have people send you some Bitcoin. I'm not set up my Bitcoin wallet because I cannot figure out what that means. But I do have a Vimmo. We can post that. No, we're all Bitcoin. Joe, why don't you help us out? What is Bitcoin? You tell us, Joe.

You're looking at me. Okay. Great. Bitcoin, yes. I got to give a shout out to Crystal Gatis Gettis on Spotify who commented suggesting we talk about this topic. So thank you, Crystal. In my mind, it is a digital currency. Like people are using it to make transactions and to store wealth and all this stuff.

Yeah, there's no physical Bitcoin from what I understand or would guess. And yeah, it's like a just digital currency. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's honestly pretty good. And this, we should say this will be the basics of the basics of Bitcoin. The beginning basics for beginners, by beginners, for basic beginning learners. That's right. So Bitcoin is the original cryptocurrency, and the motivation was saying, hey, we want something, we want a currency that is peer-to-peer that doesn't have to go through the government.

And so it is a digital currency where the led. The ledger of transactions is a blockchain, which we can try to briefly explain, that is public and everyone can see it. So as opposed to, you mentioned Venmo, instead of, if I send you money through Venmo, then you and me know about it and Venmo knows about it. Right. And Venmo can confirm it, make sure it's, yeah. And they take the money out of my account and put it in your account. And that's really the like the issue that cryptocurrency and blockchains are solving is imagine like if a dollar has a serial number and I say, hey, Joe, I'm going to try to give you this dollar digitally. Here's the serial number of the dollar.

The problem is you have it, but I still have it. And we need to somehow transfer this digital asset from me to you. And so the blockchain is the digital ledger and they accomplish it. basically by saying we're going to publicize to everyone and anyone can go check that Jason used to have it, but now Joe has it. So now if Jason tries to use it, we go, no, no, no, we can all see, not just Venmo, the whole world can see that this Bitcoin has been transferred from Jason to Joe. Right. Clear enough? Well, I want for the record, yeah, I want for the record and all the world to know that I will take all of your digital dollars, Jason.

You can go ahead and transfer that to me. Okay. Yeah. Well, my first, okay, so my first follow-up question is, who in the world invented this thing like that? This is so crazy that I understand a concept and the principle, but to actually like apply that in a vetted technology that works because, you know, a lot of security implications with what you're talking about. Who invented Bitcoin? I mean, no, not me. But wouldn't you like to know?

Nobody really knows who invented Bitcoin. Lately, it's been probably the reason why this. this question has come up is because there's a New York Times article kind of investigating who people believe the inventor Bitcoin was. So Satoshi Nakamoto is the pseudonym that was responsible for publishing the original white paper explaining Bitcoin, the one that said, we think there's a problem, we think this is a solution. And it does say we.

And so a lot of the questions were like, okay, is this a person? Is this a group? A group of people? Like, who is responsible for Bitcoin? And we still don't really know and we don't really know where the person's from, but there's been a lot of, I mean, that was 2008. And so 18 years ago, there's been a lot of, you know, conjecture around who it is. What we do know is that the person appeared on the white paper introducing what Bitcoin is. They then released the first software in 2009.

They have communications online, but never in person. And then they stopped kind of publicly communicating after a couple of years. And they also, this Satoshi Nakamoto owns a lot of Bitcoin that has never, like owns this foundational block of Bitcoin that has never moved. So there's a, whoever it is, assuming they're alive and assuming it's one person, they have roughly $100 billion in Bitcoin that they are just sitting on. They're not using. It's just there.

And the way, so Bitcoin is held anonymously, right? We can get into it more, but there's like username, a tie. attached to it like and not like Christian chick 24-7 like a string of a string of letters and numbers that's like allows you to remain anonymous and so we can't really look at it and be like oh this person owns you know this big chunk of bitcoin that's never moved so this person is the creator of bitcoin but we know like user whatever owns this chunk now as soon as that person moves that chunk they might be able to I don't know do some digging and figure out who it is so if the person moves their bitcoin we'll know who it is but if they don't move the bitcoin

they don't have the money. Yes, yeah. If they, so there is this tension of like Bitcoin is kind of famously used by drug dealers and criminals somewhat. But the irony is it's it's not anonymous. Like it's actually inherently very public. It is you can hide behind a pseudonym. You can hide behind a username. But there is this ledger that tracks where everything goes.

And so certainly if if this. this block of original Bitcoin that is owned by Satoshi was moved, it would increase the likelihood that we'd be able to figure out who it is. It could also just be used, like someone could come forward and say, I am Satoshi and I will prove it. I will sell some of the Bitcoin that has never moved. And that would be the only kind of definitive evidence that this person is who they say they are. That's helpful. Yeah, although we didn't give away Kathleen's new address, Kathleen just gave away Jason's Incent Messenger screen name. Christian chick 24-7.

That's right. He's still on AIM on weekends. Yeah, that's right. Okay, so you mention whoever this is, they're sitting on a whole pile of Bitcoin. Like, how much is Bitcoin worth, actually? Let me pull up the live data. Yes. Any guesses?

Oh, don't look. Well, I... All right. What do you think, Joe? One Bitcoin's worth $80,000. $74,000. $74,057. $0.50.

Yeah. But it could be $80,000 by the time this airs. Yeah. That's part of it. What's the most it's ever been worth? That's true. I think like 120. It was 126 October 5th.

Yeah. That was the all-time high. Yeah, that's the all-time high. Wow. Crazy. Just a little coin. So there's not, there are no actual coins. I think, Joe, you might have said that.

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All right. So there are two ways that you can own a Bitcoin. The first is that you can mine it. And I will be honest, I have no idea what this means. Like I understand the general concept, but I do not really practically understand what it means. Mining it is, so computers mine Bitcoin. It is effectively they are having to solve a very complex math equation. there are lots of computers that are competing to try to solve this equation.

And I believe the equation is built off of or based on the transactions that are happening. And so there's, you know, these now massive computers. At the beginning, you could do it on your laptop. Now, because when you complete the equation, you are rewarded with one Bitcoin. You have mined one new Bitcoin. 3.125 Bitcoin per block is the reward. And each one is worth $75,000. So there's now massive competition to be the one who successfully mines this coin.

And so the only people who are practically able are, you know, supercomputers with big data centers and stuff like that. So one, don't ask follow-up questions on what mining means, but that is one way you can get it is you can get one of the new Bitcoin. But practically speaking, like, I have the equivalent. I checked. I bought it in 2001. What? How would you buy it in 2001? Or 2020.

2011? No, no, 2021. Let's get our story straight. That's right. It's already falling apart. 2021. You know, hindsight's 2020. I should have put in more than $25, but I put in $25.

And so I'm sitting on $53. No way. I know. And Bitcoin. And that. was that just meant that I bought at the time $25 worth, so you know, 0.001 or whatever, Bitcoin from someone who is willing to sell it at that price. And so we were talking about there's a finite amount.

The most there ever will be is 21 million Bitcoin. Which is arbitrary from everything I can find. Just, I mean, there's a couple like hypotheses of where that number came from. but Satoshi made it up. Yeah. Yeah. So the most there will ever be is 21 million. Right now there's like.

20, I think. Yeah, I thought it. Yeah, somewhere I saw 19 something, but that might have been out of date. And. Roughly 20 million. Okay. So there only ever will be 21. And then once they're all mined, the only way you can get it is trading.

And so the idea is that, you know, it's a scarce asset. whereas compared to the U.S. dollar, you know, the Federal Reserve keeps printing more and more money. There's no one that is even capable of like the system is set up that there will be only 21 million. And so it is this inherently scarce asset that will, in theory, then only go up in value assuming people want the scarce asset. Okay, so hear me out. So we think of it more like stocks than money, but in a weird. like gamified way of, okay, McDonald's stock, there's 90% out there,

but 10% you got to play monopoly to find the other 10% and if you get a monopoly, then you're rewarded with another piece of stock. So it's, it makes sense that you would think of it like a stock because people, it's a currency, but people don't use it in the way that they use US dollars or at least not around here and very rarely.

So the benefits of currency are that it's, it's a means of the transaction, you know, so you don't have to barter between two services or goods. You can transfer it into this currency that then holds its value, stores its value, and can be used and redeemed at a later date. Practically speaking, it is, it is very hard to spend Bitcoin. Like, if you go into Walmart, you can't, you can't spend it the same way that you can spend U.S. dollars. Now, El Salvador has made it a, like, one of their currencies, so it has to be

accepted. And there are wallets and stuff that make it very easy for peer-to-peer transactions, but it just, it is accepted less places than the U.S. dollar in terms of my life. You know, fun fact, you know where you can buy in Bitcoin that I went first time in 10 years? Home Depot. No. A steak and shake. Really? Yes. So when you go, win. Like when you're selecting credit card or whatever? It's like Bitcoin. Yes. And yeah, you walk in. There's all these iPads and you can buy the Bitcoin burger at Steak and Shake and then you can pay with like cash or card or Bitcoin. And then I'll go on a minor, minor rant. So you walk up to the iPad, you then pay in Bitcoin or

whatever. Go sit down. They call your food. You pick it up. You go back. You bust your own table. and they're asking for a tip. And it's like, yeah. Yeah. Okay, so it looks like, so Starbucks has accepted Bitcoin and Ethereum, which we won't, but anyway, cryptocurrency.

A different cryptocurrency. Since 2021, but anywhere that does, so Walmart is in this list, like there are retailers where you can, you can use your Bitcoin there, but you have to convert it at the time of purchase. So you can't just be like, here's my Bitcoin and scan like your target app.

Well, I don't know, actually in practice how it would work. But anyway, you do have to convert it before you can spend it at the retailers, but now they are like set up to do that. Got it. Interesting. You have to convert it into dollars. You're saying? So what they're saying there is they don't, because Bitcoin is very volatile, it's worth 74,000 today. It could reasonably be worth 70,000 tomorrow or 80,000 tomorrow.

And Walmart is saying, we're not going to hold it. We're not in the business of guessing whether or not it's going to go up or down. So you can pay with Bitcoin, but it's, we've set it up to where we know it is. We're 74 now. We're changing it into U.S. dollar and then accepting the U.S. dollar. But we've made that transaction seamless. Yeah. Okay.

All right. Why is this in the news right now? Like, why are we talking about this? Because it's been around for a while. What's going on? Adam Black. Is it Adam Black? Is that who they're saying is Satoshi?

Satoshi. Yeah. So the New York Times, a New York Times journalist did an investigation. trying to figure out who Satoshi is and then published this long article saying, it's this guy named Adam Black. And it was, I read the article. It was really fascinating. I didn't, it may or may not be this guy, but I didn't realize that like, it's generally,

it's like one of 30 people that it might be. And part of what I found fascinating was this journalist was like, I was pretty sure it was this guy. He had all his reasons. And he's like, so I met. up with him and I just see this guy walking across the street and it's like I think that that guy who just looks totally normal and random is at the time it would have been like the third richest person on the planet you know it's like I think he's worth like a hundred and fifteen billion

dollars just walking across the street there it's Adam back back I think the other one's a rock movie okay okay yes not it's not the rock there But, I mean, it is interesting because, like, looking up Adam Back, um, CEO of Blockstream. So a crypto. Invented hash cash, which is used in Bitcoin mining. Like, he's very integrated. So I could see where he'd be on a short list.

Could be him. Uh, I think, I think we said earlier. This guy, Adam Back, denies it. And there's kind of nothing, nothing we can do. You know, if you wanted to prove it, he could trade. one of those coins, you know, but if he says it's not him, I think this is the end of the road for the investigation, you know, it's just a, he's denying it. And so, like, my question was, so Adam, let's say it was Adam.

I'm not saying it was or wasn't, but let's say it was Adam. He just one day was like, you know what, I'm tired of. He just just like woke up and chose anarchy one day. He was like, I want to be able to send money to somebody and not have anybody else care about it except for the people I want to send money to. and I'm going to start from scratch and I'm going to make a system for this and if enough people believe

in my system then it'll work and he became a billionaire from that like it didn't start with anything right? It's correct I mean he didn't just wake up one day if it is Adam part of what this investigation was saying is like he has decades of the right ideological beliefs and kind of

you know he created these other things he was he was vocally speaking out about digital currency and the control that it gives governments over its citizens to be able to track transactions. And he was saying this isn't good. We need a we need a currency that is not, you know, under the government. And so he had for decades the desire to create this thing. And yeah, I mean, it's regardless of your thoughts on whether or not Bitcoin,

will go to the moon or go to zero. It is a truly remarkable invention. And the blockchain and this public ledger idea is being used. Like that technology and idea is being used far beyond Bitcoin now and far beyond cryptocurrency because there's just a lot of benefits of this kind of immutable public ledger and the value that that provides. Yeah. Let's, I am going to try and briefly explain blockchain. Do it.

So it's a shared digital record of transactions stored across many computers instead of one. And it's so it's transparent, like you said, which makes it hard to tamper with because essentially, so all the transactions are grouped into blocks and linked together using cryptography. So it's all computer mumbo jumbo. And so once new things, new transactions are added, it creates a permanent history that can't be easily changed. because essentially if you go and try and change something, by the time you get to the point where you started to change it, other things have been added to the end. So the idea is it says, like, building chain

that can't easily be changed because it's forever growing. So, yeah. And all the computers connected to the network kind of check everything. In the same way that, like, where does the Internet live, you know? Like, it's, it is the entire network and connection of all, like, of all the computers. And so, yeah. Yeah.

That's very poetic, honestly. It's like he took this idea of like crowdsourcing and democratizing this currency and transactions. And yeah, poetic in a sense. Yeah, it's poetic that he either has his anonymity or billions of dollars. That's right. What a, yes. What a fascinating dilemma this man is in.

He wants to remain anonymous. and not touch the currency. And part of it is, we were talking about this over lunch, the fact that he has not, whoever it is or they, have not sold any of the money is, especially early on, what made Bitcoin specifically legitimate is that, like, it feels a little bit like a scam, you know? Oh, we've created our new currency.

Fake money. I promise it worked. And since then there have been lots of cryptocurrencies that are like, you know, pump and dump scam. schemes where it's like, hey, we have this new cryptocurrency is going to be good and the founder, you know, keeps 10%, the price goes really high and then the founder sells out. And then it's like, oh, this was just all a scam. So the fact that this guy has not touched it is like, no, I believe in the, I believe in the future of this. I believe that this will actually be a essential part of a functioning

global economy. And it really has for, I mean, we have the privilege of, The U.S. dollar has its problems and, you know, people are bothered by inflation, rightfully so. But inflation is relatively very stable. And in countries where there's hyperinflation and you do not know what the money you have will be worth tomorrow, a lot of them have, a lot of these citizens have adopted Bitcoin and are transacting in Bitcoin because even the swings in Bitcoin are much. more stable than what they have. And it does provide, you know, economic freedom. Imagine having a currency, like you're saving money and then you're just told, oh, that money's not worth anything. And then being given a currency that's, you know, less like that, at least.

So there is great use and economic value that has already been created through it in spite of its, you know, obvious flaws in volatility. All right. This has been so interesting and fascinating. I do want to see if you guys have any fun facts because I'm guessing this topic would have some. Do you have any? I have one. Yeah. My only fun thing that I saw is so if you're like actually going to get into Bitcoin,

you have to like set up your Bitcoin wallet and most of them you have to have this seed phrase they call it. It's like 12 to 24 words. like acting as like a master password so you can recover so you can like get into your whatever um so there are stories of like people losing their phrase and they just can't access their bitcoin and they've just lost lots and lots of money and to me I'm like oh my gosh yeah I saw something so it's there's only 21 million that will ever exist and I've heard that it's estimated that like four are just gone four million are just gone because of lost passwords so like lost passwords and somebody who's like keeping externally lost it feels like you're

your flash drive. Yep. It's crazy. Yeah. So my fun fact, and I'm sure a lot of people have heard this, do you know the first, the first Bitcoin transaction? Pizza. Yes.

So in 2010, yeah, 2010, this guy spent 10,000 Bitcoin on two Papa John's pizzas. So now, on the one hand, Bitcoin was worth nothing. Like he sort of just got two free pizzas. you know, it had never been used. But on the other hand, had he held that 10,000 Bitcoin to today, it would be worth $740 million. We don't know the true identity of Satoshi. Do we know the true identity of that person who spent 10,000 Bitcoin? Yeah, I've seen interviews with him, you know.

And he has a great, great attitude about it of like, hey, like it wasn't, it was like a joke on, you know, Reddit. Like Bitcoin was, it was this silly. digital currency that wasn't meant to like actually be of economic value. It was like you would you would just give Bitcoin. Like if you on Reddit, you know, you'd be like, oh, I like your comment. Here's some Bitcoin because it's symbolic. It's coming up. No, you're right.

This does say Papa John. So it was about $41 that he spent. But now it would be over $900 million making it the most expensive pizza purchase in history. It's celebrated annually on May 22nd as Bitcoin Pizza Day. Nice. And one other thing. So the smallest unit of Bitcoin, do you know what it's called? Oh, I think I do.

Is it a Satoshi? A Satoshi. So not only did this guy create cryptocurrency. He was like, the smallest piece that you can buy, I'm going to call it a Satoshi. And so it's, I think, one 100 millionth or something. I don't know. There's like eight zeros. So yeah.

So if Bitcoin is worth $100,000, then one Satoshi would be worth one tenth of a penny. Wow. That's a bold move. Just be like, and we'll call the littlest part a Satoshi. Well, the other thing is that's real optimistic to act like Bitcoin was going to get big enough that something with eight zeros would be even a relevant unit of measure. So way to go, Satoshi. Yeah, way to go. Nice.

Yeah. All right. Christian perspectives. Oh, man. Trying to understand Bitcoin had me feeling very small. And I was just thinking eternal perspective. Like, I'm, this is, there's volatility and there's, you know, I don't know, there was just a lot going on. And so I was like, I'm going to learn about this and not let it stress me out because this is not going to matter in a few years.

Now, I mean, maybe if I had a lot of Bitcoin, it would matter in different ways. but yeah um yeah just eternal perspective for me thinking about um yeah just keep my eyes fix on other things same for me it feel there's something about cryptocurrency and bitcoin in general and investing and all this that just feels uh like i don't understand it and that i'm missing out on something. And so zooming out and saying like, hey, I'm going to, it just, it feels unstable to me. And so zooming out and being like, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to stand on the rock and keep my eyes on the horizon above the waves.

And so that was the reminder for me is like, hey, I need to, I need to zoom out and keep the number one thing, the number one thing and not think about what if I had put more than $25 in Bitcoin and stuff like that. Yeah. So good. Yeah, thanks for the Christian perspective, guys. Well, thanks everyone for joining us on another episode of TPO Explains. As a reminder, you can watch this episode on YouTube and Spotify.

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