Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - YAPClassic: The Future of Money is Cryptocurrency

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Starting point is 00:00:27 and Participating Source. Taxes and other fee still apply. You're listening to YAP, Young and Profiting Podcast, a place where you can listen, learn, and profit. Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Halla Taha, and on Young and Profiting Podcast, we investigate a new topic each week and interview some of the brightest minds in the world. My goal is to turn their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your everyday

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Starting point is 00:01:19 had to gain influence, the art of entrepreneurship, and more. If you're smart and like to continually improve yourself, hit the subscribe button because you'll love it here at Young & Profiting Podcast. Over the past few years, cryptocurrency has been on the tip of everyone's tongue. Words like blockchain, bitcoin, and Ethereum have woven their way into our daily vocabulary. But what does it all mean?

Starting point is 00:01:45 And why should we pay attention? Cryptocurrency may seem confusing or intimidating, but it's undoubtedly one of the most important topics of our times. Top entrepreneurs like Kevin O'Leary are calling it the biggest thing since the Internet. You can't afford to sleep on this, and today's episode is going to help you get up to speed. In this conversation, our guests will teach the fundamentals of crypto, and you'll understand how to get involved and why cryptocurrency could be the money of the future. Our lineup today includes cryptocurrency power influencer Philip Nunn,rency marketing strategist O'Hod Flinker, University educator and

Starting point is 00:02:26 blockchain researcher Edward Lennor, and co-founders of cryptocurrency capital LLC Paul Savchuk and Tim Melanick. These guys are leaders in the world of cryptocurrency and they all agree that blockchain and cryptocurrency are creating once in a lifetime opportunities, especially for millennials. Today's episodes are an edited down version of my episodes number two and three. And yes, these were recorded way back in 2018, but they're still more relevant than ever. And I put so much effort into these first few episodes that these are still amongst my favorite episodes ever. So I think you're gonna really enjoy it. We'll include the links in the show notes

Starting point is 00:03:07 so you can check out the full, unedited versions as well. To get a grip on cryptocurrency, we should start from the beginning. Let's dive into why this new currency came into play to begin with. If you actually think about globalization and how the world's become smaller, there's only really been two things that have impacted that in the last, and they've both happened in the last sort of 30 years. The first was the advent of the internet for me. You know,

Starting point is 00:03:36 when you, if you remember the first sort of internet and the internet, people were sort of laughing at it and saying it would never have any impact or take on. What the internet's done is given us this freedom and ability to exchange information freely with each other and instantly. And the second one was then the smartphone. The smartphones had more of a profound effect in terms of the world mobile and we can sort of track where we are and what we're doing. It's a, it's usually in the third one, which is this new wave that's come along, is blockchain, technology, and cryptocurrency.

Starting point is 00:04:05 And what this really means is, for the first time ever in the history of the world, we're creating this internet of value whereby, without any bank, government, or institution in the middle, I can exchange value with you. So we would be able to exchange value with no middle man, no intermediary, and within seconds from the UK to New York. And it's really quite exciting. Money started out as a store of value that was coupled to a commodity like gold or silver. And in 1971, Richard Nixon decoupled the US dollar from the value of gold, creating

Starting point is 00:04:42 a fiat currency or value by decree, just because the king or the government said so. And it worked okay pretty much until people felt like they lost trust in 2008. And we trust a very small group of companies and government agencies to manage our value in the world. And that usually works until it doesn't like in the financial crisis of 2008. And what happened very soon afterwards in 2009 is that a very small group of tech eeks ran this social experiment.

Starting point is 00:05:15 Let's create our own ledger. And instead of a bank or a government agency being an organization that trusts to manage that value, we'll have the to manage that value, will have the crowd manage that value. And more and more people over the past decade have poured their time and resources into the Bitcoin blockchain. And it was the first real use case or proof that the blockchain can actually work.

Starting point is 00:05:42 You know, people who've been in that space for a long time have been sitting on this technology and waiting for the opportune moment because while the economic times were good and we were thriving and everything was good, if Bitcoin had come along you'd have just been left left away as quick as it came along but actually when people have had enough of the banking system collapsing, government bailouts, qualitative easing, you know, if you look at countries like Cyprus, Portugal, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Argentina's, in Barbouille, I'll keep naming them, we've got massive economic crisis and people are looking for another way

Starting point is 00:06:17 in another solution. So this is why I had the maximum impact. And it's here to stay, you know, it's not gonna go anywhere. And why does it work? Because enough people agree that it's a store of value. And part of the reason it's such a polarizing issue is because the idea behind Bitcoin is a little bit surversive because the definition of money is currency issued by a government. And there is no government that issues Bitcoin. And so it's this weird new asset.

Starting point is 00:06:49 But for all intents and purposes, it is working. And as a result, when people saw that it was working over the past few years, more and more other cryptocurrencies, other blockchains and other tokens or units of value that are coupled to a specific blockchain such as Ethereum have been created. So if you take away Bitcoin tomorrow morning, obviously it would hurt the blockchain, but it would not make this financial genie, this thing that everybody's calling the Internet of Money or the Internet of Value. It would not make that go away because the internet of money or the internet of value, it would not make that go away because the idea of this digital currency that is not issued by a central authority, a government bank is so powerful that the people have voted with their wallets, with their time, with their resources, that this is a thing that people want. One of the first mistakes I think people make with trying to figure out this thing called

Starting point is 00:07:48 the blockchain and Bitcoin is trying to figure out the technology. And I think the more interesting question is why people are so excited about the blockchain and about Bitcoin? You don't have to actually understand it, how it works. You need to understand how you can use it. And it doesn't mean that you need to make the search of who created why it has value and what kind of protocol was used. People use Amazon on their phone. They use the Google their phone. They have no understanding how it works, but they still take benefit of it. What I always say is, blockchain technology, all you have to think of it is, all the blockchain is a database of ledger, but as opposed to working centrally on one centralized server,

Starting point is 00:08:37 it's decentralized on many different nodes and machines, and it works in a totally different way. But it's much like a body of mine on LinkedIn stated a while ago that if I got into telling you how microwave worked and the fundamentals of that, you'd probably never use one again. And most people actually when you talk about the internet, how many people in the world know how the internet works. If I asked you to explain exactly how Instagram worked

Starting point is 00:09:04 and the fundamentals of it, you wouldn't be able to explain exactly how Instagram worked and the fundamentals of it, you wouldn't be able to explain it not many of us would. So really what it's all about is this thing is going to sort of slowly come underneath us by the internet did and to understand the fundamentals of it, that you're moving from a centralized way of working to a decentralized way of working, that's really all you need to know. And the father is going to give you a secure way of trading value. So can you talk about why cryptocurrency and blockchain is important for young professionals and millennials to begin to study and get familiar with?

Starting point is 00:09:37 Like why is that important for them to start interacting with this new technology? Sure. I think particularly for millennials, your generation will be inheriting the folly of previous generations. The amount of debt that your generation is inheriting is significant. And so this opportunity, and I think, you know, every generation has this opportunity

Starting point is 00:10:03 with a significant wealth creation. So I saw this during my career, early career, in the internet, where people became million errors and billion errors. I mean, that was in internet 1.0. By the time internet 2.0 comes around, because of things like network effect, Facebook has a type of network effect that Yahoo only dreamt about in 1998. Or Google had a type of network effect where they basically were able to catalog the entire world, right? Whether the Google maps or information on the web, those types of opportunities

Starting point is 00:10:39 have kind of come and gone. So particularly, I think why millennials should be interested in cryptocurrencies, one, the crushing that sadly, this generation will inherit. Two, and probably more importantly, it's this wealth generation opportunity of your generation. If one were alive in the late 1870s, I would say railroads, getting to railroads, right? Or getting to banking, right? Try to figure out what John Peer Point Morgan is doing. Or if one were, if there was, through the 70s, I would talk about the personal computer. But now as we're, you know, approaching 2020, this wealth generation opportunity is so salient.

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Starting point is 00:14:38 I mean, goodness me, I have to be careful out of these podcasts because I don't want to get shot somehow by a like a secret agent. I'm sure I won't, but you know, we've had a way of working for many, many years, probably hundreds of years, which is a centralized way of working, more very controlled by the system. And that's the biggest stranglehold this breaks. You know, guys who've had all the power of had it too good for too long, and I see cryptocurrency as an uprising. And this leads on to the question about helping society. I mean, you look at the world we live in and how much wealth there is in the world. It's just unfair. It doesn't work. The system does not work. We still have poverty. We still have

Starting point is 00:15:21 people starving. I feel like there is a lot of reason why Wall Street and bankers are so afraid of Wall Chain is because everything is going to be so transparent that you will not be able to create new derivatives or created full plots like in which cost the mortgage crisis or the dot com crisis, or each time we had like a kind of depression or like stagnation or like this financial crisis, it was because of the influence of those major players. And the reason why it happened, because nobody could control it, everything was happened behind the closed doors. And even if you have the account in this bank, even if you know how these financial markets work,

Starting point is 00:16:09 and what type of assets you can trade or invest, you still under the risk that Bangers gonna use your money five, six times more with offshore account, or like they're not gonna to audit their company properly and you will not be confident that they have funds or not. And if you're talking about blockchain, to control all these processes like behind the closed doors in the open way.

Starting point is 00:16:38 So everybody's going to know what's happening no matter what. I mean, I live in America, we live in America, we have banking systems, access to credit. People don't have this. It really got me, and I've always, you know, for the last few years, it's been so diligent about my cryptocurrency, but really what made it so compelling for me was last December, December of 2016,

Starting point is 00:17:02 when India took out most of its currency. They took out what in America would be the equivalent of all ones, all their fives, all their tens, and all their 20s. They basically just went to high note bills, 50s and 100s. But that's this idea in economics, which we call Gresham's Law. Gresham's Law is that the good money goes out of the economy. And that's exactly what happened in India. The Indian government gave seven hours notice.

Starting point is 00:17:28 Basically, it would be the equivalent of our president saying, okay, we're no longer going to accept cash, except for 50s and 100s. All that money will go out of the economy almost directly. And all those small bills are now worthless. In millions of people suffered. I'm sure thousands or hundreds of thousands suffered greatly and many died. And that made me think about how important it is. What we're doing in cryptocurrency is that we're providing a counter narrative to a traditional

Starting point is 00:18:01 banking system. We still have people dropping bombs on Syria, which is due to, you know, political sentiment and all this sort of thing. And I'm a great believer that blockchain and the movement of blockchain and cryptocurrency is one that can wipe out lots of this corruption and lots of this sort of lack of integrity and unfairness that exists in the world. If you whether or not this actually happens, I don't know, but I think in terms of a better society, there's your altruistic, there's your sort of SK scenario for me. But as if you look at it from a buzz living in a Western world and going to work every day and living an honest life and do what we do, I think what's going to happen

Starting point is 00:18:43 going forward is that instead of people like Facebook and Amazon and Google and Microsoft and the big Silicon Valley companies monetizing our existence and monetizing our data and controlling that side of how we exist, I think that's going to change. So in the future, I see a future where there will be a version of Facebook. I think Facebook will be gone in 10 years completely. We'll sort of say, remember Facebook like my space. And there'll be a version of Facebook that will be very much a decentralized version

Starting point is 00:19:12 where we're all on there. We can exchange value with each other. So I can be in a restaurant and I will tag myself in the restaurant and I will get some tokens for doing that. So we'll all be able to monetize our existence in a better way. We'll be able to use our spare hours where we're a lawyer and we want to give two or three hours a week extra work and we'll be able to tokenize that. So we're moving to this sort of decentralized tokenized way of working, but I think it's power to the people in that we'll all be able to create

Starting point is 00:19:39 and value within our own existence. And that's really powerful. I know when it comes to cryptocurrency Bitcoin kind of takes all the shine. It was the first, it's the biggest. How about Ethereum, the lesser known counterpart of Bitcoin? Sure. In 2014, Vitalik Petera and the founder of Ethereum basically came to the Bitcoin community with a very simple and powerful idea. And he basically said, if the blockchain works for Bitcoin as currency, why can't we take the same idea and apply it to pretty much any other

Starting point is 00:20:15 centralized method of managing value or even of managing identity? So real estate contracts, even digital identity could, in theory, be managed by this decentralized network. And he proposed creating another blockchain called the Ethereum that would enable anybody to create a smart contract that governs a token that isn't just an asset but has actually utilitarian use. Ethereum has a blockchain and within the Ethereum blockchain people can write smart contracts and raise money. So for example, Filecoin raised money on the Ethereum blockchain. Telegram, the encrypted networking and messaging system on phones just had an ICO and I want to say they raised

Starting point is 00:21:12 probably the largest ICO ever. Ethereum is this blockchain network which has the opportunities and the code built into it with smart contracts to raise money. So like mentioned, Ethereum is a blockchain platform that moves beyond the cryptocurrency use case. It uses smart contract technology to support solutions for things like identity and reputation systems, file storage, banking, and insurance. And here's one concrete example of an Ethereum DAP on the rise called Civic. Civic aims to help protect users identity and provide blockchain-based secure, low-cost, on-demand access to identity

Starting point is 00:21:59 verification. This prevents the need to start from scratch every time someone requests a background verification check for something like opening up a bank account or applying for a job. With an example like this, it's easy to see why Bloomberg News writes Ethereum is the hottest platform in the world of cryptocurrencies and blockchains, and companies like JPMorgan Chase, Intel and Microsoft use their resources to invest in it. But I'll be honest with you, it wasn't easy for me to find a clear, practical, live, and working example of a DAP or cryptocurrency. Can you talk about how companies and industries and people find value in blockchain and the types of services and use cases

Starting point is 00:22:38 there are for that technology? Yeah, so I think right now, a lot of people are liking the blockchain Ecosphere and the development around blockchain to the internet circa 1993 And that is that everyone's talking about this vast potential But if one were to go back in the archives of the Internet of 1992 or 1991, there wasn't a lot

Starting point is 00:23:06 of commerce going on. So to liken that to blockchain now, there are a lot of opportunities for applications, but not everyone or all these applications are being enacted. This is a really interesting point. So what you've got to remember at the moment is that the whole of the cryptocurrency has a $321 billion market cap today, and that's been as high as three quarters of a trillion dollars in December last year. Everything's really still in beta phase, and by beta phase, I mean, the fundamentally,

Starting point is 00:23:37 the technology doesn't really work in every day life at the moment. So things I would Bitcoin transaction speeds, the advent of small contracts and sort of lots of corporations are poking up, running them to see how they can work and fundamentally change their businesses. So what we've created here is an industry where I think by the end of this year will be over a trillion dollar market cap comfortably. We've created an industry here that cannavis almost in this like R&D phase and if you talk about the internet and the advent of the internet, we're kind of in the 1980s at the moment, and in equivalent, I mean, obviously the internet really kicked in in the 90s,

Starting point is 00:24:14 mid to late 90s, it really blew up. So we're kind of in the 80s. So we're 10 years behind what we would deem as the sort of start of the internet. However, because of the speed of which technology moves now, I don't think it will be a 10-year period. So I think over the next three or four years, there's a compression will happen, and the market cap will continue to grow, and this brilliant innovations will happen in these genius minds who've got access to capital now via initial coin offerings will create some of the most magnificent technologies of the future. So it's a really exciting time. I think what you're really finding the moment is that it's more of a gimmick. So a restaurant

Starting point is 00:24:50 will say we accept Dash and Monero and Bitcoin and it's more of a gimmick, which can get a bit of press and profile and publicity. So I don't think in terms of main adoption, I think what we're seeing is Bitcoin has a store of value, so people actually buying large amounts of Bitcoin as a long-term hold, as an alternative to stocks and shares and gold. Hold tight, everyone. Let's take a quick break and hear from our sponsors. Hear that sound, young and profitors? You should know that sound by now, but in case you don't, that's the sound of another

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Starting point is 00:31:39 That's masterclass.com-profiting for 15% off an annual membership. Masterclass.com- profiting for 15% off an annual membership. Masterclass.com slash profiting. Here's the fun fact. I happen to be recording this podcast on May 22nd, which is known as Bitcoin Pizza Day. Today, Bitcoiners all over the world will celebrate the anniversary of the first real world transaction of Bitcoin and the most expensive pizzas in history.

Starting point is 00:32:07 On May 22nd, 2010, a programmer paid a fellow Bitcoin user 10,000 BTC for two Papa John's pizzas. Back then, when the technology was just over a year old, that equated to about $25. But that's worth over $5 million by today's exchange rate. At Bitcoin's all-time high last December, the pizzas would have been worth over $11 million, making them the most expensive pizzas of all time. With growth like that, it's clear to see why nobody wants to buy anything with their cryptocurrency and rather they choose to invest in it as a store of value.

Starting point is 00:32:42 But why is cryptocurrency growing so fast? And what makes it so valuable? So as far as cryptocurrency is concerned, how can people trust it to be something of value? Well, the reality is that they do trust it. Again, there are two Fiat currency, like the dollar since 1971, is a unit of value that has value because the government says it has value. Before 1971, it had value not just because the government said so, but because it was coupled to the value of gold, which people agreed has had value for thousands or years before that. But the reason it has value is because enough people agree that it has value.

Starting point is 00:33:23 So that's all you really need. Enough people need to agree that it has value. And the reason that it really took off over the past couple years is because it hit a critical mass where people are just saying, wow, this is the new thing, the new internet of money, I want to be a part of that as well. When you have a cryptocurrency, when there's very few outstanding

Starting point is 00:33:47 and there's a use case for it, I think it can be very highly valued. And so Bitcoin is predicated on the idea of scarcity. There will only be 21 million Bitcoin ever. Right now, there have been over 17 million mind. And so over the course of the next 100 years, there will be fewer and fewer coins mind

Starting point is 00:34:12 to the point where, at some point, Bitcoin will only be a store of value. This idea of scarcity makes Bitcoin different from a fiat currency like the USD. Bitcoin was originally created to be a store of value similar to gold. The value of the US dollar has eroded over the years because the Federal Reserve is allowed to print money. In order to prevent Bitcoin from operating like fiat, Satoshi Nakamoto included a 21 million cap on how many Bitcoins could ever exist. This way, no one can simply boost the number of bitcoins in the same way that the Fed just prints money. The market value of Bitcoin,

Starting point is 00:34:51 that is the money that people are willing to pay for it, follows the same old supply and demand rule. A high demand increases its price and a low demand decreases it. The demand for bitcoins is on the rise, yet its supply is limited. So in theory, big coins will become more valuable in the future as scarcity sets in. Medcalfe's law. Medcalfe's law highlights that as you add one user to the network, it increasingly grows in value. So if you have 10 people using a cryptocurrency, then it goes up 10x. But if you have 20 people or 30 people, and right now it was estimated, there's only about 20 million people in all the world who hold cryptocurrency. But if one were to run a

Starting point is 00:35:36 Medcalfe law on that network, whether that be Bitcoin or the whole cryptocurrency, Ecosphere in general, that's a very valuable network. It's only really a crumb of a crumb in terms of market cap. I mean, today, I think the whole entire cryptocurrency Ecosphere is under 500 billion. In terms of other asset classes, only a drop in a bucket compared to real estate, or the bond market, or the S&P 500. Any of the other asset classes, it's such a small asset class. Can you talk about the importance of a cryptocurrency

Starting point is 00:36:14 community and why it's important to look at that community when considering investing in the space? So Bitcoin would not be what it is today if millions of people were not there to lie into it, to spend it, and to develop it. So whoever Satoshi Nakamoto is, who is first few people who put together the system, whoever they are, they are not enough. This is bigger than one person or one group of people. What made Bitcoin so powerful, what launched the blockchain and the Bitcoin blockchain under the scene, was critical mass. So millions of people developing, mining, spending, and talking about this. What would you say to somebody who said that it's too late

Starting point is 00:37:07 to buy Bitcoin? I would say it depends. One is, what is your stomach for risk? I know many people who bought Bitcoin at $12,000. They were very excited when it ran at $20,000 and cashed out. And so as a short-term play, it may be smart. It's not a bad idea. It's not a bad idea. It's not a bad idea. It's not a bad idea. It's not a bad idea.

Starting point is 00:37:27 It's not a bad idea. It's not a bad idea. It's not a bad idea. It's not a bad idea. It's not a bad idea. It's not a bad idea. It's not a bad idea. It's not a bad idea.

Starting point is 00:37:35 It's not a bad idea. It's not a bad idea. It's not a bad idea. It's not a bad idea. It's not a bad idea. It's not a bad idea. It's not a bad idea. It's not a bad idea.

Starting point is 00:37:43 It's not a bad idea. It's not a bad idea. It's not a bad idea. It's not a bad idea. It's not a bad idea. It's not a bad idea. really factors that tend to discourage cryptocurrency trading. So in terms of it, is it too late? I tend not to be a Bitcoin maximalist and I'm certainly not all together in favor of what the D-Cred white paper called the prototype coin, Bitcoin. That was a prototype.

Starting point is 00:38:00 And many people, particularly the Bitcoin maximalists, are gathering around the flag, highlighting that Bitcoin will go to a million dollars. and many people, particularly the Bitcoin maximalists, are gathering around the flag, highlighting that Bitcoin will go to a million dollars. I don't know. I'm not convinced by that argument because I see other algorithms that use a lot less electricity and tend to be fairer. Well, there's a couple of points here.

Starting point is 00:38:18 So first, I'll be clear that obviously none of this constitutes advice. I'm not, nor is anybody a cryptocurrency advisor because it's a very unregulated space. But I think there will be cryptocurrency funds this year that people will be able to access by regulatory means, which will be interesting. So, actually, if you look at Bitcoin today, Bitcoin is the sixth largest currency in the world.

Starting point is 00:38:42 And when people say Bitcoin is dead and Bitcoin is doomed, a Bitcoin is not here to stay. Number six in currencies in the world out of nearly 300 countries. So Bitcoin's doing just okay. Now there is obviously a possibility that Bitcoin could go to zero. There's a possibility that Bitcoin will here to a $250,000 of coin. You can't rule out those possibilities. But actually, there's also the possibility of the dollar goes to zero, which most people think it already is. Same with the pound, same with the euro, inflationary currencies. Just like any other currency, the interesting thing about Bitcoin is Bitcoin doesn't act just as a currency. Bitcoin

Starting point is 00:39:26 acts as all three. So it kind of acts as a currency, like a dollar, so you can trade it. I can go to a shop, send you with a Bitcoin card, and I can pay for my goods. It also acts as a store of value, like a long-term store of value, which is then dictated by the share price going up or down, so the price of Bitcoin, there's a currency going up or down. And also it acts as a commodity, it's a good competitor to gold. So basically you have almost like a three-pronged currency of Bitcoin, it's a very fascinating thing. And as you say, if you actually think about the supply and demand of Bitcoin, all that's got to happen over the next 12 or 18 months with the current circulation of Bitcoin are a few of the largest sovereign wealth funds, or maybe banks and institutions as a defensive

Starting point is 00:40:15 strategy, they want Bitcoin in case they get hacked, so they'll hold a lot on their accounts for hacking and things like that. If they start taking large tranches of Bitcoin out of the market and removing those from the general people needing to invest through Coinbase, that creates a huge supply and demand. So what you would potentially have is millions and millions of people trying to buy about two or three million Bitcoin. And that creates the supply and demand. So the price predictions, if you look at people like Tim Draper, he's saying $250,000 coin by 2022, I wouldn't say that's going to happen. I think

Starting point is 00:40:52 we'll have a six figure sum per Bitcoin by then, but it will purely be driven by supply and demand. I recently just read a paper where there's only 23 million Bitcoin wallets throughout the entire world. Well, there are over 7 billion people on the planet. And so if you think about network effects, let's say it were to double or triple or let's say a billion people, one seventh of all people in the world use cryptocurrencies. The network effect and as a result, the wealth generation of that would be exponential.

Starting point is 00:41:27 It's the most exciting gaming town because it's the intersection of finance, but more particularly, magical math, particularly network effect. In terms of investing in other cryptocurrencies, I mean, I would not veer away from anything that's a top 20 market cap. I think what we're doing is we are creating the next internet, which is the internet of value. And the companies that are in the top 10, maybe 50, maybe 20 market cap are all there because they're the best of what they're doing, that specific industry. So like IOTA is internet of things. You've got Monero, which is privacy. You've got

Starting point is 00:42:05 Ethereum, Neo, which are the utility, smart contract type scenarios. But actually what you do always have to bear in mind is that this industry moves so quickly and so fast, there could be a new Ethereum in 12 months time that takes two thirds of Ethereum's market share because it doesn't have scalability issues, it's quicker, it works better, and it's quite a fickle industry that can move quite quickly, which is kind of where it mirrors the tech bubble. So there are lots of different scenarios that could play out. A very high percentage of these businesses will fail, because fundamentally they are tech startups, and if you look at a VC model they expect 1810 to fail. It's a high-risk,

Starting point is 00:42:46 high-reward market. People shouldn't believe that this is a put your life savings in and it's going to give you a tenfold return on your retirement pop because that's not the way to do this because you could lose all your money. You have to be very careful. I think when we invest in, and this was always the advice I think that's out there, is only invest the amount that you can reasonably lose. Why do you think that millennials should pay attention to cryptocurrency? What are the reasons why we might need to pay attention to this, whether it be investing or otherwise?

Starting point is 00:43:20 Well, I think, as I said that the cryptocurrency genie is out of the bottle. It's not going away. Maybe Bitcoin will be replaced, right? Google was not the first search engine and very few people remember what the major search engine was before Google. So maybe a new cryptocurrency will emerge that will be bigger than Bitcoin. Maybe Bitcoin over time will be marginalized. But the blockchain and cryptocurrencies are here to stay. And eventually, probably the traditional financial system will find a way to integrate the blockchain and cryptocurrencies into it.

Starting point is 00:44:04 And the borders will cryptocurrencies into it. The borders will blur and mesh. So if you're interested in investing, if you're interested in the new digital money, I think cryptocurrency is going to stay with us for a long time. I think it's just getting started. And I will not make any kind of investment and fights,

Starting point is 00:44:26 but I am a firm believer in the potential of the blockchain and in the future of cryptocurrencies as a whole. So I don't know which cryptocurrency is going to last for years to come, but I do know that cryptocurrency is not going away. Why should millennials pay attention to cryptocurrency? Look, we have a global debt crisis, trillions and trillions of dollars, all over the world. And we have a scenario where the system is broken,

Starting point is 00:44:59 huge deficits in pension funds, every single pension fund that's attached to a Fursuwank 100 company or NASDAQ company or a listed company, they are underfunded, they are billions and trillions in deficit. We have to provide a future for ourselves. And the way the world works, the way we work at the moment, we go to work, we get a salary, we pay something to a pension, we save. Millennials are interested in that. Millennials need more stimulation in a more immediate way, and people won't save for a 20 to 25 year outcome anymore. So people want more certainty, more security around their future. So what you have is this ridiculously tech savvy group of people,

Starting point is 00:45:42 IE millennials in Gen Z, who are intrigued and inquisitive, they want to save, they want to do the right things for the future. And cryptocurrency is absolutely the ticket for these people. So a way of actually saving some money, being in control of your money, away from the distrust of traditional financial institutions and governments and banks, well then actually making money from my own existence and my own data and what I do. This is the future of the world. So people taking back a bit of control and being in charge of their own destiny and being able to make a freer and fairer sort of future for themselves.

Starting point is 00:46:21 What an awesome episode. This is such an exciting time in the world! As our experts said, while the types of cryptocurrency may change, crypto, as a concept, is here to stay. Learning about cryptocurrency and keeping an ear out for what's new in the crypto world is crucial for making the best choices for our futures. One of the most powerful parts of this episode for me was talking about why young professionals and millennials should be familiar with cryptocurrency and blockchain. The potential of this new currency is unmatched, and the beauty is, it's still evolving. This is just the beginning.

Starting point is 00:46:56 Think about it. Most of this audio was taken from 4 years ago, and it's literally more relevant now than it even was back then. There is still time to get involved. And so much has changed since then. So stay tuned for a lot more content on NFTs, the Metaverse, Web3.0, and so much more coming soon on YAP. I feel super passionate about getting my audience up to speed on all of these topics. So this is going to be a major content focus for the next few months so that we can all get the right foundation we need to be effective and ensure that we stay

Starting point is 00:47:30 young and profiting. But remember, this is a high risk high reward market. We don't know how it's going to change. So be cautious if you're considering investing. A good rule of thumb is only invest what you're willing to lose. And lastly, it's okay if cryptocurrency and blockchain seem confusing or overwhelming. Remember what our experts said. You don't have to understand exactly how it all works. You just need to understand how you can use it. I think that's a really solid advice. I hope this episode was a step in helping you understand how you can use these new currencies.

Starting point is 00:48:03 I know it was for me when I listened to it and studied it when I first put out these episodes number two and three. And you can listen to the unedited versions. You can just scroll all the way back to episodes number two and three of YAP and hear the full conversation. It was about twice as long. So it's a lot more information. And if you've got the time, I highly encourage you to go listen to that.

Starting point is 00:48:23 We'll stick the links in the show notes. Thanks to my YAP team for all their support and putting together this show. And if you enjoyed this episode and you want to learn more about NFT content, let us know, DM me on Twitter or Instagram at YAP with Hala, or find me on LinkedIn by searching my name, it's Hala Taha. You can also leave your feedback by dropping us a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform. Until next time, this is Hala, signing off.

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Starting point is 00:49:25 spending a lot of time energy or money. Suggestions such as follow the one minute rule. Choose a one word theme for the year or design your summer. We also feature segments like know yourself better where we discuss questions like are you an over buyer or an under buyer? Morning person or night person, abundance lever or simplicity lever. And every episode includes a happiness hack, a quick, easy shortcut to more happy.

Starting point is 00:49:48 Listen and follow the podcast, Happier with Gretchen Ruben. How are you doing? For automatic energy savings! Plus free energy on the hottest day. Don't you see it? Free days are now the coolest day. In this summer's hottest blood flow, sir. Guaranteed to keep you cool. The savings are coming from inside the house! Open the summer pad. Energy savings has been developed so cool. Yes, you energy. Energy for everything. Captain Banner now to learn more.

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Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - YAPClassic: The Future of Money is Cryptocurrency

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