#844 - Andreas Antonopoulos

[0] All you creeps that are controlling money all throughout the world, your time is slowly closing in.

[1] Am I right?

[2] Yep.

[3] Andreas Antonopoulos, published author of The Internet of Money.

[4] You've been on the show many times before, but you've never been on the show two days after a book fresh off the presses.

[5] Tell the story about how this book got delivered to you today because it's kind of hilarious.

[6] Yeah, so nobody knew about this.

[7] This is my announcement.

[8] This is my second book.

[9] First book was mastering Bitcoin was for techies.

[10] The Internet of Money is for everybody else.

[11] And it's a collection of my talks.

[12] And I was having the first copy delivered to my hotel this morning in order to bring it to the show and give it to you.

[13] And it was a day late.

[14] It was supposed to be delivered yesterday.

[15] And I'm waiting and I'm refreshing the tracking number site.

[16] And then you said, you know, we can push it back by half hour.

[17] because you're running a bit late and in that half hour the book got delivered it literally was printed september 5th this is the first copy i've touched and it's yours oh boy i've got it folks issue zero zero zero zero one now why do they do that not just one why don't they just make it one why does everybody have to do oh one well i'm not printing 10 000 issues so well they never go it's never like 0 -0 -0 -0 -0 -1 do they ever do that I don't have a pair of shoes once recently with that it was like one out of 12th Why are you in one of my ears only?

[18] What the hell's going on there?

[19] I can't have you in my left ear It's like you're like The Voice of Good Or the voice of bad Oh yeah?

[20] Yeah I got it too So it's on your end Yeah that's too weird We can't have that Try it again Nope Nope, you fucking weirdo.

[21] You're coming in my left ear only.

[22] Probably the rest of America, too, right?

[23] Yeah, they can't have that.

[24] People are at the gym going, what the fuck, Jamie's in my left ear?

[25] So this is a collection of all your talks.

[26] What has changed in the world of Bitcoin since the last time we spoke?

[27] We've spoken, we hung out in Vegas, which was great.

[28] I had a great time with you.

[29] But what has changed in the world of Bitcoin since the last time?

[30] Well, it's been about a year and a half almost.

[31] And so much, so much happening in the meantime.

[32] We had a pretty slow 2015 and 2016 picked up again.

[33] 2015 still coming off, slow and gradual drop in the price.

[34] People were very reluctant and skeptical.

[35] The media was constantly bashing Bitcoin.

[36] And then at the same time, we saw this really interesting phenomenon where the bank started getting interested in this thing.

[37] But not Bitcoin itself.

[38] No, the blockchain, the technology behind Bitcoin, which is rather amusing.

[39] I look at that a bit as if, you know, the horse buggy association of America is going, oh, we like this automobile thing you've designed, but we have a very big investment in hay and horses and stables and veterinarian.

[40] So we're going to use the technology behind the automobile, the pneumatic tire, and we're going to revolutionize horse buggies.

[41] But in all fairness, I think.

[42] What you're saying is hilarious, but in all fairness, it is a weird thing to invest in, like to go all in on Bitcoin.

[43] I mean, I know you do it, but you also make all of your money this way, and this is, you know, you're a proselytizing person when it comes to Bitcoin, right?

[44] For good reason.

[45] But for the average person, say, who's saved up actual cash money their whole life and is involved in this established system of money to throw all their money into Bitcoin.

[46] That would be insane.

[47] You watch the money fluctuate, it goes up, and it goes down.

[48] I'm glad you said that, that it would be insane.

[49] No, that would be a terrible idea.

[50] Right, but you think that that's probably why the media bashes it and why banks are just looking at it going, hmm, like people see that there's a growing number of people that are using it for transactions.

[51] There's Bitcoin ATMs now, and people are using it to purchase things.

[52] There's several companies that accept Bitcoin for products, for actual real physical products but yeah but i mean it's not an investment and it shouldn't be treated as an investment um i mean i don't even mean like as an investment i mean as like a primary source of money of if if you decided to take all of your money not as an investment but just say i'm going going to live off a bitcoin i'm going to spend bitcoin like your money's going to go up and down like yeah that's going to be really hard especially if you're um if you're accustomed to privileged banking.

[53] Like if you have the kind of banking that we have in this country, if you actually have access to that and you have a nice visa debit card and you don't pay account fees and your money doesn't get confiscated by a dictator too often and, you know, you can earn your money and interact with other people, then why would you use Bitcoin?

[54] The simple answer is that's not really the use case.

[55] But there are lots of people around the world who simply don't have access to that.

[56] And for them, you know, in many cases, Bitcoin is the stable currency.

[57] You know, ask an Argentinian, a Venezuela, and a Brazilian, Cypriot, a Greek, and the list goes on and on and on, whether they're worried about volatility in Bitcoin.

[58] And in many cases, if they've heard of it, if they've used it, that's the stable currency.

[59] Their national currency is far, far worse, right?

[60] Did you say Brazil?

[61] Yeah, Brazil has had a massive devaluation in the last year.

[62] How much devaluation?

[63] Because I know that they have experienced some sort of a really radical economic downturn, which is really interesting because a few years ago, when we first started going into Brazil, their economy was booming.

[64] Right.

[65] We, I'm saying the UFC.

[66] Yeah, they're in a currency crisis right now.

[67] Massive currency crisis.

[68] What's going on?

[69] Well, apart from the political crisis that's going on, and I won't speak for that because I'm not a Brazilian, but, you know, they've had impeachment proceedings.

[70] They just impeach their president.

[71] There's been a lot of economic difficulty with the country.

[72] And I think their currency has devalued almost 30 % in the last year, 20 or 30%, some staggering amount.

[73] Currencies don't move like that.

[74] Mainstream national currencies that have very large economies behind them simply don't move like that.

[75] We've seen it happen only a couple of times.

[76] We've seen it happen in Greece and Cyprus during the economic crisis.

[77] We saw it happen in Britain during Brexit, and we've seen it in places like Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, and places like that.

[78] How much currency did, how much of a percentage of Britain you lose during Brexit?

[79] Almost 20 % in a day.

[80] Wow.

[81] And three things responded to that in the opposite direction.

[82] Gold, the Japanese yen, and Bitcoin, heading in the exact opposite direction.

[83] Bitcoin climbed 20 % that day almost.

[84] Really?

[85] So did Britain rebound?

[86] It did a bit, but it's still in historic lows, multi -decade lows.

[87] So they took a really big hit.

[88] And what we've seen again and again is at times of crisis, we see this pattern repeating where people use Bitcoin as a safe haven investment to get money out of national currencies, especially where there are very strict currency capital controls.

[89] So one of the reasons we've seen Bitcoin, probably, one of the reasons we've seen a lot of activity with Bitcoin in China is because of currency controls.

[90] Every time the Yuan, the Chinese currency, devalues against the dollar and it's done so I think four times in the last year every time there's a massive uptick in Bitcoin buying in China so people are parking the money in Bitcoin or using it to convert it to other currencies and get money out of the country so what is the biggest fluctuation that Bitcoin is at um well it depends whether you look at it on a monetary basis or on a percentage basis if you look at the movements now it can go up 30, 40, even 100 bucks in a day, which seems like a lot, but as a percentage, the biggest fluctuations it had were in 2010 and 2011 when it rose from under a dollar to over 30 and then back down to under a dollar in a period of a couple of months.

[91] Now, for people who don't understand what this means, when you're saying it 100 bucks or a dollar or 30 dollars, like what is that in relationship to?

[92] One Bitcoin.

[93] One Bitcoin equals $30.

[94] It did in 2011.

[95] And what does it equal right now?

[96] $617.

[97] $617?

[98] Mm -hmm.

[99] Jesus.

[100] It was about $230 at the beginning of this year.

[101] So it's seen a massive ramp up and a renewal of interest.

[102] That, okay, so massive ramp up, but like what's the fluctuation?

[103] So if it's at $616, is that what you said?

[104] Yeah.

[105] It's tripled since the beginning of the year almost.

[106] Is it possible that it could drop to like $200 tomorrow?

[107] Yes.

[108] See, that scares a shit out of people.

[109] Yes, and which is why, you know, but here's the truth.

[110] Over the 70 years that it's existed, the volatility as a percentage has been going down every single year.

[111] So as the economy gets bigger, the bigger it is, the more stable it is.

[112] It doesn't get buffeted around, right?

[113] It's just like a very large boat doesn't get pushed around by the waves.

[114] Bitcoin is like a zodont.

[115] next to the U .S. dollar's Titanic.

[116] And the little zodiac is bouncing up and down on the waves a lot, right?

[117] And it might be uncomfortable at times.

[118] Of course, if you're heading to an iceberg, you want to be in the thing that can actually turn on a dime.

[119] That's a good way to look at it.

[120] I don't know if it's a fair analogy, but it's a good way to look at it.

[121] It's volatile.

[122] And that's part of the fact that a $10 to $12 billion economy stretched across the entire globe is a small economy as a currency.

[123] Now, in the interest of making this a standalone podcast, so people are not going to go back and listen to all the other podcasts that we've done, explain very briefly if you could.

[124] What is Bitcoin?

[125] And how does it work?

[126] I'm glad I have this opportunity to do it again, because every time we have a new audience.

[127] So Bitcoin is Internet money.

[128] It's a system of money that exists on the Internet, was created on the Internet, and it allows you to send and receive value, the same way you can send and receive an email.

[129] anywhere in the world, instantaneously without intermediaries.

[130] And that's kind of what you see at first glance.

[131] Behind that, it's a whole platform.

[132] It is as the title of the book says, The Internet of Money.

[133] It is a set of protocols that allow you to basically exchange value with other people, but you can do a lot more with it than just that.

[134] Most people will use it as a currency.

[135] It's basically money that you can transmit from your smartphone to, somebody else's smartphone directly, just like cash, but electronic.

[136] And the thing about it that's unique is that it's not owned by any corporation, any bank, or any government, just like the web isn't owned by anyone or email isn't owned by anyone.

[137] And there's lots of companies that can send and receive email.

[138] There's lots of companies that can set up websites.

[139] There's a lot of companies that can set up applications that use Bitcoin.

[140] and I should say that when you set it up for me the first time you did it a bunch of people donated Bitcoin so what I did was I'd said whatever people donated I would match I would double it and then we would donate it to fight for the forgotten they build wells in the Congo yeah and we built I don't remember how many Justin Wren said but it was I don't even remember how much money but it was many thousands of dollars people donated and then I doubled it and and then we sent it over to the Congo.

[141] So the Bitcoin community is very generous, is my point.

[142] That is true.

[143] And part of that generosity comes from the fact that a lot of the people in this community are very excited about this technology and want to share it with others.

[144] They want to tell other people about this technology.

[145] It's really quite interesting what happens when you create a form of money that is truly global.

[146] We really don't have forms of money that are truly global.

[147] If you, even with your very advanced banking system and your access to all of the technology that you have in the American banking system, if you try to send money to some countries, it's almost impossible to do.

[148] And I experience this every time I get paid in Bitcoin.

[149] I'll go into a conference in Europe and I'll do one conference with a banking industry and one conference with the Bitcoin community and the little Bitcoin conference is going to be free to attend and I don't make any money, but they sometimes cover some of my expenses.

[150] and I'll send an invoice, and the banking industry conference will send me a wire transfer.

[151] It takes, on average, four weeks for me to get it with several calls to find out where it went, what's going on, why did it get lost?

[152] And it takes me on average 15 minutes to get paid in Bitcoin, no matter which country am being paid it.

[153] Is this a cynic in me, is this because when they take the money and they're transferring it, they're moving it around, and now it's sitting in banks, when banks have money, if they have your money, even if it's just for a few weeks, they have the opportunity to use that money to make more money.

[154] Are they doing that?

[155] It certainly doesn't hurt to keep it a bit longer.

[156] They're doing it primarily because because the system has a series of intermediaries, and each of those intermediaries represent a risk.

[157] If one of those intermediaries says, I have the money for Mr. Antonopoulos's wire, and you give that money to Antonopoulos, but the intermediary doesn't give it to you, you're out of money, right?

[158] So there's risk.

[159] With every intermediary you put in, there's risk, and that's called counterparty risk.

[160] Because of the way the banking system is with perhaps five, six, seven intermediaries in a single transfer, that creates a lot of cumulative risk, and they protect with that risk by slowing things down.

[161] And that risk doesn't exist in Bitcoin because it's from one party direct.

[162] to another.

[163] No counterparties.

[164] That's one of the core principles.

[165] The funny thing, I had this conversation with my bank.

[166] I had done this conference in Germany, Frankfurt, at the headquarters of the Bundesbank.

[167] Now, for those of your viewers or listeners who don't know, the Bundesbank is the Federal Bank of Germany.

[168] And they probably consider the United States Federal Reserve to be a mediocre creditor compared to the Bundesbank.

[169] This is like the best credit rating on the planet, right?

[170] And I'm going to speak at a conference there and they're paying me for my expenses.

[171] They send a wire transfer and I call my bank and after four weeks they finally find it and tell me we've received your bank your bank wire transfer.

[172] We're going to hold it because of a risk profile.

[173] I don't understand.

[174] Well, you haven't paid by this particular payer before so we're going to put a hold on it so you do know this is the Bundesbank you are holding and they held it for two weeks you are holding for two weeks because of the credit risk of the Federal Bank of Germany the most credit worthy institution I'm not trying to receive money from Somalia you know this isn't even something weird and if if even they can't pay me in the age of the internet instantaneously, there is something wrong with this banking system.

[175] And there is because I got paid for the Bitcoin conference who was doing in the same town instantaneously.

[176] But there's also concern on their end about fraud, right?

[177] I mean, isn't, but there's fraud with Bitcoin as well.

[178] I mean, wasn't there that issue with those guys that were investigating the dark web?

[179] It turned out that the agents were stealing Bitcoin to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars wasn't that the case with uh yes absolutely so the difference the difference is a difference between systemic fraud and individual cases of fraud um so um in bitcoin as in the traditional banking system if if a bank or an organization concentrates a lot of money then you can go in and steal it you basically rob the bitcoin bank just like people rob the normal bank.

[180] And how would they do that?

[181] Just hack into it somehow or another?

[182] Yep, they hack in and they do it.

[183] And this has happened many, many times.

[184] And this is a problem with Bitcoin banks as opposed to person -to -person exchanges.

[185] Correct.

[186] Because the whole point of Bitcoin is that you don't need to put your money in the custody of someone else.

[187] Right.

[188] And if instead you use Bitcoin as it is intended, where everybody keeps control of their own money, then in order to hack all of those people, you either have to hack the Bitcoin protocol itself has not happened in seven years and the way it's structured is impossible to do or you have to hack each individual account holder and you can hack individual account holders depending on their level of security and sophistication but um you know to get very large amounts you you have to wait for them to give their money to someone else what was that exchange the Bitcoin bank that started off as like a fantasy website and some what was that again this was m t gocks in japan the magic the gathering online which you see in the early days of bitcoin there were no exchanges so you've got to think back like do you remember on the web in the early days when even the the largest most sophisticated corporations had a page with a single logo and a gray background and some flashing lights that said under construction like in 1994 right that's where we are in Bitcoin still.

[189] So there's a, there were no, um, well -run exchanges at the time.

[190] It was very difficult to buy and sell Bitcoin.

[191] And so this guy in Japan had a site that could trade these magic the gathering online cards.

[192] And, um, he converted the site to trade currencies instead to trade cryptocurrencies.

[193] Uh, turns out it's a lot easier to hack in and steal cryptocurrencies than it is to steal the cards.

[194] whatever happened with that because the story was like hundreds of thousands of dollars in bitcoins just vanished hundreds of millions of dollars they didn't vanish oh boy they didn't vanish someone stole it they got stolen they got cycled through the economy and they're back in the economy now they're just not with the same owners no one knows who no one knows who that seems bizarre like if you rob a bank like they can put a trace on the bills and they can figure it out eventually and most people get you caught, right?

[195] Yeah, not really.

[196] I mean, no. No. No, they, if you, if you do wire fraud, perhaps, but in many cases with cash, Bitcoin is like cash.

[197] It is equally untraceable.

[198] It's very difficult to actually catch.

[199] Like, I think recently, um, I was reading about the FBI closing the, uh, D .B. Cooper case.

[200] It's the guy who robbed the bank, got into, um, 717 aircraft, opened the rear stake case and jumped out to the parachute over the Midwest.

[201] Yeah.

[202] It was never seen again.

[203] Yeah, they think that guy died, though.

[204] Well, that would be a convenient explanation for the failure of the FBI to catch him.

[205] Yeah, it would be convenient.

[206] But also, didn't he, like, drop into the woods?

[207] I don't know the details.

[208] They never found him, body, or money ever again.

[209] But that can happen pretty easy.

[210] I would be more likely or more apt to believe that if someone dropped in the woods out of a parachute, with some fucking haphazard gear and leapt out of the back of a plane they probably died probably got eaten by bears or something yes or found by a local woodsman in the cabin who's like some some dude fell out of the sky with a satchel full of money thump my money I need a new chainsaw yeah yeah but when you're stealing money from a bank can't they trace the serial numbers like if you steal cash like if you you go you know this is a robbery stick them up and you point a gun at the teller and they fill up the bag with currency and you run out the door don't they have like a trace on that money like where they can if you spend not really cash no no no not really and they can because they have all kinds of i mean yes if they had a batch of sequentially numbered clean money yeah but that's not how most banks work what the money they have on hand is the stuff that came deposited in the last week um by various people cash businesses like delis and grocery stores and things like that and they have no idea what the numbers on those bills are and they don't trace it it's simply considered part of the risk of business and what is this a boy d b cooper's money before oh shit some of it look at this out of the left side of my ears i don't know it's a bad cable i have to reset okay no sign of d b cooper ever emerged investigators doubt he survived and never been able to determine his true identity but a Boy digging on the Columbia River Beach in 1980 found three bundles of weathered $20 bills.

[211] Cooper's cash, according to the serial numbers.

[212] That guy's dead as fuck.

[213] They found his money.

[214] Some of his money.

[215] Well, do you like left some of it?

[216] Just being sneaky?

[217] I'm gonna pretend I'm dead.

[218] Just leave some of this here.

[219] No, they only found like a very small...

[220] I don't think they recovered more than a tiny fraction of it.

[221] Oh.

[222] Yeah.

[223] But I don't know.

[224] I mean, I don't remember the details of...

[225] Didn't he only steal like $200 ,000, though?

[226] I think it was only like $200 ,000 or something.

[227] Yeah, and in those days, you could pay the national death with that kind of money.

[228] What year was it?

[229] Like 60s?

[230] 171.

[231] There's a lot of money in those days.

[232] That D .B. Cooper store is an interesting story.

[233] People love a story like that where people don't get caught.

[234] Yeah, the mystery of the unknown.

[235] Well, the Mount Gawks thing, the exchange is kind of a mystery too.

[236] That's a $100 million, or many hundreds of millions of dollar mystery.

[237] Inside Story of Mount Gawks, Bitcoin's, $460 million disaster.

[238] 460.

[239] Look at that guy.

[240] They're leading him around.

[241] That's Mark Carpellus, who's, yes.

[242] That's the guy who created him.

[243] He's now out on parole, I believe, or on pending trial.

[244] That guy's out?

[245] Mm -hmm.

[246] $460 million and he's out?

[247] Yeah, of course.

[248] Well, is he responsible?

[249] Just because he's retarded?

[250] You know, that's one of the things we don't know, And maybe we'll never know how much of that response, whether it was deliberate, whether it was an inside child, whether it was simply incompetence.

[251] Certainly there was enormous amounts of incompetence.

[252] That's clear.

[253] And when you listen to him's talk, I've heard him in speeches when he's discussing the issue.

[254] You're like, wait a minute, that guy?

[255] Yes, exactly.

[256] But have you heard Bernie Madoff talk?

[257] Yes, true.

[258] Right?

[259] I mean, the thing is that even the most, and the interesting thing is that just up to the day, before Bernie Madoff was indicted.

[260] He was the top trusted name on Wall Street.

[261] He had the most stellar credit rating.

[262] He was the head of the credit rating agency for those types of funds that he was rated under.

[263] And the next day, he's a crook.

[264] So you can see these things happen throughout human history.

[265] Changing the form of money you use doesn't change that.

[266] But if you change the architecture of money and you make it less necessary and less useful to concentrate the money in the hands of third parties, that has an impact.

[267] So that's one of the issues with this, something like Mount Cox or with any banking system other than the Bitcoin system?

[268] Yes.

[269] I mean, the problem is the counterparty risk.

[270] If you give your money to other people, the entire reason we have oversight in banking is because of the simple truth that if you give your money to other people, eventually they'll try to steal it.

[271] uh that's it and the only reason they they don't because someone in the bank is going to have a tremendous need a tremendous gambling problem uh an addiction um something right or just have a lack of empathy and social socialization and just be you know crooked crooked but they don't even have to be crooked they can make a mistake in trading and try to cover it up with customer money they can have a debt, their parent may require an expensive surgery that they can't afford.

[272] There's lots of reasons why people commit financial fraud, and not all of it is because they're just greedy evil assholes.

[273] But the bottom line is that all of the oversight system we have in banking, which, by the way, fails again and again and again and again to protect regular people from these thefts.

[274] All of these systems we have exist for that one reason.

[275] So the answer is not build better systems to watch the people who hold your money.

[276] The answer that Bitcoin gives is don't let others hold your money, hold your own money, and then you don't have this problem.

[277] There was a recent investigative report about a firm in Georgia.

[278] I want to say it's Atlanta that has a ridiculously high rate of success with investments, and they interviewed the guy who runs it and his reasons for why they're so wildly successful and they make so much more money than anybody else were very suspect and they're closing in on this guy like what's going on over here and they think that not only is the Bernie Madoff model not just Bernie Madoff but they think that it's common and that there's a lot of people that might be supplementing legitimate investments with a pyramid scheme and that it's been a standard operation model for a lot of these firms because they've been able to pull it off.

[279] What we've seen again and again throughout history in the area of finance is that when there's a recession, when there's a drop in income and profitability for everyone, that event is actually really good for capitalism.

[280] What it does is it washes out the frauds.

[281] It washes out the failures.

[282] It washes out the unprofitable businesses.

[283] It's a great cleansing event.

[284] right because the tide recedes and suddenly you see who's not wearing swimming trunks right it's like we knew there was something fishy going on under the water but um that's a good way of looking at it when that happens in in wall streets all of those companies that were simply reinvesting the the recent gains to pay the people who was drawing their money or the retirees they're supporting in their pension fund etc suddenly they don't they can't do that anymore they're washed out of the business, badly performing businesses, unprofitable businesses, all of these things get washed out.

[285] We haven't been doing this in this country for the last three decades.

[286] Instead, what happens is every time there is a recession, the Fed steps in, or the government steps in, and basically they pump water to raise the tide again, right, as much as possible.

[287] And that means that a lot of the crooks float from recession to recession without getting revealed.

[288] Worse, it encourages that kind of behavior.

[289] And so you get all of these businesses whose only ability to make profits is when the interest rate is zero and there's $20 billion a month being injected by the Fed, and their business model is take that and lend it to consumers for $29 .99 APR.

[290] Right?

[291] Or do payday loans or subprime loans or subprime auto student loans, mortgages, et cetera, et cetera.

[292] You need a cleansing event to wash out the fraud.

[293] I like the example of a forest fire.

[294] If you suppress all of the small fires, what happens is eventually you build up a lot of undergrowth in the forest.

[295] A small fire doesn't kill the trees.

[296] It just cleans out the undergrowth.

[297] You keep putting out the fires, which we've seen since the 70s here in the States.

[298] You let all of the undergrowth grow up.

[299] then when a fire comes through, it's not just a little forest fire, it's a raging inferno.

[300] Now you can't put it out, and it burns the trees and destroys the soil, sterilizes the top foot of soil.

[301] We've seen this happen, right?

[302] And so this is now happening in terms of our economy, which is that all of this bubble creation doesn't get washed out in a recession, more stimulus, more funding, the Federal Reserve pumps, more money into the economy, trillions of dollars since 2008.

[303] And all of the stimulus, where does it go?

[304] It goes into inflating not one bubble.

[305] We had real estate, but now we have real estate and subprime auto and student loans and, and, and bonds and stocks and currencies, all inflating at the same time.

[306] Is it possible to do a controlled burn for the economy?

[307] Like, that's what they're doing in some places where they're.

[308] want to deal with the issue that, you know, you're talking about how there's, stop force fires.

[309] That's theoretically part of the mandate of the Federal Reserve, which most people don't realize is a private corporation owned by the banks and not a government agency.

[310] Yeah, that's a tricky name.

[311] Yes.

[312] Federal Reserve.

[313] Because there's nothing to do with that.

[314] Yeah.

[315] It's kind of gross.

[316] Yeah.

[317] In fact, I can't name, say, my publishing company for the book, the federal publisher.

[318] They won't allow me to put the word federal.

[319] in the name of my company, as they shouldn't, right?

[320] But in order to create an organization like that, you need an act of Congress.

[321] In fact, actually, what you need is an act of Congress passed in the middle of the night on a recess, which is exactly how they passed the Federal Reserve Act in 1913.

[322] That was a long -ass time ago.

[323] Yep.

[324] It's so ridiculous to keep that name.

[325] But there is federal ammunition.

[326] I should just say that.

[327] You can buy bullets.

[328] A company called Federal ammunition has nothing to do with the federal government.

[329] Interesting.

[330] It's just a good company to buy bullets from.

[331] It just seems like the controlled burn idea, how would you apply that to the economy?

[332] I mean, if what we're talking about...

[333] You raise the interest rates.

[334] You raise them.

[335] Yep.

[336] Which drains the swamp.

[337] Raise the interest rates.

[338] Basically, the interest rate controls the cost of money.

[339] If you make money more expensive, then those who borrow it have to have a pretty good rate of investment in return on their investment to invest it, right?

[340] Otherwise, they don't borrow money.

[341] That's an extremely unpopular idea, though, right?

[342] So how do you get that across?

[343] Well, it's an unpopular idea because it benefits savers instead of debtors.

[344] So if you have savings, it's a great idea.

[345] I remember a time when I could get a certificate of deposit for my savings in the bank, and I could get 3 % a year, 3 % a year, right?

[346] I can't get 0 .3 % now.

[347] So savers get wiped out.

[348] If you're a retiree who's got all of their money in savings right now, the return you're getting on those savings isn't enough to cover your cost of living.

[349] So your money basically is shrinking.

[350] And that's a tax on savers that benefits debtors, especially very large debtors like the federal government.

[351] Yeah, it's such a complicated system that for the average person that's working all day and, you know, you get home, you have hobbies and family and things that you want to.

[352] do it's very difficult to get a grip on exactly how money works yes it is and it's one of the things i found through my experiences doing these talks that i do um and i talk about that in the book too that the whole point of this particular book the internet of money is why bitcoin and i talk about the philosophy behind money the the topics of money that most people don't understand and what's really astonishing is that here i am and i'm talking about The greatest experiment in money started in 2008, 2009, and this great experiment is completely unprecedented in the history of money.

[353] And I'm not talking about Bitcoin.

[354] I'm talking about 22 central banks simultaneously taking their interest rate to zero and pumping the largest amount of money ever created into the world economy, trying to stop it from collapsing.

[355] And that has created the largest bubble in history.

[356] And the weird thing is that most people are not even aware that they're living in a time when we are doing this completely unprecedented, untested, no one knows where it goes, huge monetary experiments in which 2 billion people are hostage as part of it, at least, right?

[357] And nobody knows where this is going to go, but most economists, mainstream economists, say this doesn't end well.

[358] What does that mean, though?

[359] And then we have the other little monetary experiment, which is, hey, money on the internet with a controlled issuance, only a certain amount of the money is created.

[360] It's controlled by a mathematical formula.

[361] You can't make more.

[362] And as a result, it's got a stable supply.

[363] It's sound money.

[364] And it cannot be manipulated by governments or banks.

[365] Well, it's so confusing for anyone as it is when you get into the issue of what is money and where is money coming from.

[366] And how does the Federal Reserve, how does the government, how does anybody create more money?

[367] How do you print more money?

[368] And if you are printing more money, where is it coming from?

[369] And what is it?

[370] Debt.

[371] Right.

[372] But what is it?

[373] Like, what is money?

[374] It used to be the gold standard.

[375] It used to be, if you had a dollar, it was a dollar's worth of gold.

[376] It was a note that was worth a dollar's worth of gold.

[377] Yes.

[378] That made sense.

[379] And that stopped.

[380] Well, it first stopped in 1936, I believe Bretton Woods Agreement.

[381] and then it stopped completely in 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window.

[382] He basically said, if anyone comes to your bank and gives you one silver dollar or one gold dollar and says, I want my silver, you say no. And basically defaulted on the backing of U .S. dollars by gold.

[383] I met this really wacky guy a long time ago that was, he was coming around the comedy stories, this really odd guy for a bunch of reasons.

[384] but one of the things is he carried a gun everywhere he went and he believed in he believed in precious gold coins that were minted outside of the federal government and using those as currency yes and so he would have these coins that he carried with them everything and we'd try to pay for things in these coins like gold and silver coins mostly silver it's silver coins and he was trying to explain to me that this is legal and that they're supposed to accept these and it was very weird stuff he was a very very odd he was very annoying too he was one of those guys they like talk to you he kept touching you we would talk to you and like hold you and like grab your arm and hold you and like touch you and all right fucker what do you're a control freak it's like a weird control freak you know if someone's saying something to you and they are holding on to you while they're saying that to you unless you're in love with them you know like it creates a very strange moment Yeah, why are you holding me?

[385] Can I get loose here?

[386] What if I have to run away real quick?

[387] Do I have to break this grip?

[388] But this guy used to carry these coins around with them.

[389] I get a fucking sack.

[390] He likes to touch his money.

[391] Do you have coins off commercials and shit like that?

[392] No, man, they were like some weird fucking coin with like an American Eagle on them and Liberty coins or something.

[393] Yeah, they're not weird.

[394] They're minted in the U .S. full silver coins.

[395] Let me tell you right now, they're weird as fuck.

[396] They're weird if you try to use them to buy a coffee.

[397] although a lot of people buy these and gold coins and small gold bars as investments they keep them in a safe right and the idea is if there is a significant crash in the currency then these have holding value and it's not it's I think perfectly sane to say if you have some money put aside in savings don't put it all in stocks maybe diversify put a bit in precious metals maybe put a bit in digital currencies maybe put a bit in commodities and other things that's kind of reasonable investing and here's the thing a lot of the people who have these kinds of attitudes come from families and from cultures where there has been a time in the past two generations where you leave in the middle of the night with all of your belongings in a pillowcase and with people with guns and dogs after you trying to murder you and this happens today in Syria right um it happens uh one generation to go to my parents generation in in greece with the nazis um it happens to the russian people it happens to people all over the world and when that happens and it's it's really close when it happens generation before right your parents tell you the stories it's a it's a different feeling it hasn't happened to most americans uh in at least two or three generations But when that happens, what do you put in the pillowcase?

[398] And I'll tell you something, the pieces of paper are worthless when that happens.

[399] And that's why some people do want to have physical coin.

[400] Now, one of the things we've noticed now is that digital currencies may start to serve a role.

[401] The fact is that you can memorize 12 English words and carry your entire Bitcoin wallet in your head.

[402] And if you do that, well, you can...

[403] 12 English words?

[404] Mm -hmm.

[405] What are those words?

[406] Rebel Cilcian, party on.

[407] Yeah, so you can generate a Bitcoin wallet, right?

[408] And then make a backup of it.

[409] And for convenience, some of the inventors in the space developed a system where you can back up any Bitcoin wallet, even if it has millions and billions of transactions and assets in it.

[410] You can back it up to between 12 and 24 English words that are generated automatically by the program.

[411] So it could be like that speech and pulp, fiction where Samuel Jackson pulls a gun on that kid that could be your password yes um you don't pick the words though oh you don't pick the words you're gonna get a series of words and they're going to be um you know asparagus forest uh attorney whatever it's all like i like dicks please shit on my head yeah no sentences and no words like that but think about the power of being able to transport an unlimited amount of money simply by memorizing 12 words that can't be confiscated from you when you're a refugee.

[412] It's amazing.

[413] I mean, look, the whole idea behind it is incredibly fascinating to me. And I've been a fan of it since the time I met you.

[414] And before that, I was reasonably interested in it.

[415] But, of course, having you illuminate it in such a great way really made it much more, much more enticing, much more interesting.

[416] And I've always been curious from that point on as to where it's going to go.

[417] And I just don't know, when I look at the landscape of money, when I look at the landscape of people that are willing to make this leap, I don't know what it would take to get people fully on board with Bitcoin.

[418] But I believe, like you do, that the system that we have now, the banking system, is incredibly corrupt and just bizarre.

[419] are.

[420] And fragile.

[421] And I think that's the thing that most people are missing.

[422] It looks giant imposing.

[423] It's been there for a century that is not a sign of strength.

[424] Did you find that that company in Atlanta that has this massive return on your investment that's being investigated?

[425] I was looking it up and I'm not sure if I found the right guy and I didn't want to call him out.

[426] Okay.

[427] But it's got to be a bunch of those people.

[428] there they're doing that right yeah absolutely there's there's a lot of a system like that which is which is very opaque which most people don't understand is the kind of system you want to corrupt because that's where you can make the most money without anybody noticing and of course you know financial crime is not really prosecuted in this country um in 2008 giant crisis millions of homeowners kicked out of their homes illegal foreclosures robosigning mills blah blah blah blah The only person who went to jail, Bernie Madoff, who stole from the rich.

[429] Pretty much everybody else got free.

[430] It is pretty interesting.

[431] It's almost like he was just a scapegoat.

[432] Well, he was obviously a crook.

[433] He was obviously a crook.

[434] He was obviously a crook.

[435] And a sociopath or something.

[436] Surrounded by hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of crooks in the same scale and giant investment banks that are just as corrupt.

[437] And we don't see that, right?

[438] You can get pulled over for a busted taillight and thrown in jail in plenty of the states in this country for six months for having an herb in your car.

[439] And at the same time, you can put a million people out of their homes through straight up fraud with mountains of evidence and emails and things like that and they're untouchable.

[440] That system, the problem isn't the fact that there is fraud.

[441] The problem is that the system itself is fragile because of that.

[442] And if it was just them going out of business when the fragile system has problems, when it has hiccups, as it did in 2008, that's fine.

[443] But it's not just them going out of business.

[444] It's a generation of kids who leave college with nothing waiting for all them but a job.

[445] And, you know, coming into a generation where their pay.

[446] Parents could get by with one income in a household and now three jobs each in a household of two, and you can't afford to buy a car, let alone a house, right?

[447] So we're part of the new sharing economy.

[448] What is the sharing economy?

[449] It's the I can't own anything because I can't afford anything economy.

[450] So that whole generation is now suffering because of that fragility of the system, and the fragility hasn't gone away.

[451] but I don't want to dwell too much on the negative right because the thing that I find positive and interesting about Bitcoin is that it serves a global society it is truly global transnational money there's plenty of places in the world that have it worse than the US there are some places that have it better financially but it really is quite an incredible concept to be able to have this money that can operate on a global basis and With that, the opportunities to buy and sell and trade and invest and borrow internationally.

[452] The fact that what we did with the fundraising here to fundraise for those wells, right, we don't know if that was just people in the U .S. donating.

[453] It wasn't.

[454] I can guarantee you there were people from all over the world donating.

[455] That's almost impossible to do with traditional payment systems.

[456] You could have then sent that money directly to where the wells were being built.

[457] Again, anywhere in the world.

[458] And that's really exciting to me. People are uncomfortable with Bitcoin because it represents changing one of the fundamental ancient technologies of civilization, money.

[459] And we've only changed that technology four or five times in the history of human civilization.

[460] We've gone from bare bones barter systems.

[461] Here's a goat, give me three chickens, right?

[462] To systems of precious metals and other nice objects, feathers, shells, etc., to exclusively precious metals, two precious metals stamped with the faces of kings.

[463] And then at some point, around the 15th century, you start seeing certificate of deposit for precious metal being exchanged, paper notes.

[464] I have a deposit of gold there.

[465] I'm not going to move the gold from my deposit to your deposit.

[466] I'll just give you the piece of paper that says you're now the owner, and paper money is introduced.

[467] And then plastic in the 1950s, diners club, travelers checks, and the first credit cards.

[468] And if you think any of these transitions were smooth, none of them were smooth.

[469] You go to someone who's been using precious metals for 10 generations, and you say, hey, this piece of paper is money.

[470] They're like, mm -mm, give me something shiny that I can bite.

[471] That's money.

[472] This paper, I don't know who you are.

[473] Go away.

[474] How long is that transition?

[475] 400 years.

[476] Wow.

[477] Right?

[478] Until broad acceptance of paper money.

[479] 400 years with huge resistance.

[480] It took almost 40 years for credit cards to go mainstream.

[481] With Bitcoin, we're going to do it.

[482] Probably in less than 20.

[483] You think so, but it's been almost 10.

[484] It's been about seven.

[485] Seven?

[486] Yeah, and it's accelerating very much.

[487] I think in some countries you're going to see either Bitcoin or a cryptocurrency very similar or based on Bitcoin be used as commonly as a national currency.

[488] We're not looking to displace national currencies.

[489] We're looking to supplement them.

[490] I think the idea being that people will get comfortable using multiple currencies, just like many places they are.

[491] If you're operating between the border of Kenya and Tanzania, for example, you're probably going to use four different currencies, Kenyan money, Tanzania, and U .S. dollars and euros, easily, possibly also South African Rand.

[492] So you've got four or five currencies.

[493] You can stop a four -year -old in the street and ask them what the exchange rate is and they'll tell you, right?

[494] Because they trade for their parents in merchant stalls, the border and they have people coming with all kinds of different currencies.

[495] It's not that difficult to assume that there's digital currencies in that future, either there or in a major modern metropolis where people are using Bitcoin to transact online to buy things, virtual things, music, video, things like that, what you want to make very, very small payments where credit cards are not suitable, and use Bitcoin as well as their normal currencies.

[496] the progress that makes you so optimistic?

[497] Like, what is the, I mean, if you could point to any one thing or several things, it make you optimistic about Bitcoin's future?

[498] Well, I think watching it as a computer scientist, as a technologist, I look at this and I see innovation that is accelerating, and I see much of the early vision opening up, the possibility of doing things that are so far outside what we could do with traditional no money, that it often blows my mind.

[499] For example, a technology that's being introduced into Bitcoin now is called payment channels, and what it allows you to do is to do a very high volume of very small transactions at a very rapid rate.

[500] Let's say you want to watch a video and you want to pay the owner of that video to send it to you.

[501] how about paying by the second?

[502] And so you set up basically an account and you pay by every second of video, maybe every fifth of a second, 200 milliseconds of video at a time, and you're paying a fraction that is a thousandth of a penny.

[503] And you keep watching video and paying a thousandth of a penny for every fifth of a second on this drip metered basis.

[504] Well, you're not doing it.

[505] Your computer software is doing it.

[506] communicating with our computer software.

[507] And now you can do this really incredible thing.

[508] You can pay for content what it's actually worth whereas the threshold for payments on a credit card is $2 to $3 unless you're Apple and you're doing billions in which case you can take it down to $0 .99.

[509] That's about the lowest you can go.

[510] So meaning watching like something on YouTube or some similar video streaming device you would have to pay or service rather you'd have to pay but you would pay a very minuscule amount Yes.

[511] Like, what are you talking about?

[512] A couple of cents?

[513] Like, to watch a video?

[514] No, I literally mean a thousandth, a five hundredth of a cent.

[515] To watch a video.

[516] Well, it depends how long the video is.

[517] Right.

[518] But you could, yeah, it could be a scale.

[519] You could be a penny.

[520] Yeah.

[521] You could be a penny or half a penny or a tenth of a penny to watch a video.

[522] But what, how would that work for the people that are providing content?

[523] Well, you see, the thing is they operate at a scale.

[524] I have 30 ,000 views on one of my.

[525] videos right um so youtube pays me 30 bucks for that if i put ads in front if i was getting a penny from each of my customers or because these are like hour long videos maybe i'm going to charge more maybe i'm going to charge 25 cents you know 30 000 views 25 cents somebody do the math please uh i'm not good at doing improv math seven grand no it's like 70 bucks 70 dollars Five cents is a quarter of a dollar.

[526] No, it's $7 ,000, you're right.

[527] Yeah.

[528] So it's a rare time where I'm right at a math fucking quick question like that.

[529] So maybe I'm going to charge less.

[530] Maybe, but in any case, I can beat what YouTube gives me in terms of ad revenue with each customer paying a fraction of a penny.

[531] And here's the real question.

[532] But I get this content for free right now, Andreas.

[533] Why would I pay a fraction of a penny?

[534] You don't get it for free.

[535] You're paying.

[536] No, you're paying in, yes, in micro -violations of your privacy.

[537] What your...

[538] If the product costs less than $2 or $3...

[539] James making the stink face.

[540] I was agreeing with you, but that was a weird way to word it.

[541] Yeah.

[542] If...

[543] Go get another cord.

[544] If the payment is worth less than $2 or $3, right?

[545] Which means they can't collect it with a credit card.

[546] What they're doing is they're selling your data to advertisers.

[547] They're selling your...

[548] identity, your demographics, your data to advertisers.

[549] So you're getting, you're having to give up things.

[550] You don't give them up at that moment.

[551] You've given them up previously when you registered for the thing and verified your email and then verified your age and your gender and provided all of this demographic information, which they then parcel up and give to the advertisers.

[552] But you're still paying for the content.

[553] You're paying by the fact that you can no longer engage with the web without it being filtered to what they think you want and who they think you are, right?

[554] So you're getting this highly filtered pigeonholed view of content.

[555] And they do that using your information to present what they think you would like to watch based on what they've sold to the advertisers.

[556] You're no longer a customer, you're the product.

[557] The customer is the advertising agency.

[558] Whereas if you sell content directly, you reestablish the relationship of who is the creator and who is the customer, the consumer of this content, and you cut out the two middlemen.

[559] Yeah, but you're cutting out advertising?

[560] Good luck.

[561] And also, the other thing is, like, people don't want to pay.

[562] Even if it's a fraction of a penny, they just don't want to pay.

[563] I disagree.

[564] Do you think if people, there's a lot of dopes that watch YouTube all day.

[565] Like, they sit in front of their computer, they slack jaw from morning to night, and they just watch YouTube videos.

[566] If they just calculated those fractions of pay, penny all day, that would be dollars and dollars every day, which would mean hundreds of dollars every few months.

[567] Well, you've got to think about this as a broader economy, because a lot of these people could also earn a bit by making a good comment, which actually ends up covering some of their cost of viewing.

[568] So you've got to think about it.

[569] You can earn from comments?

[570] Yeah, that's where it gets really interesting.

[571] Is this blockchain, all this that you're talking about?

[572] No, you could do this with Bitcoin.

[573] You could do this with blockchain.

[574] What is the difference between blockchain and Bitcoin?

[575] Sorry to hijack this.

[576] No, no problem.

[577] So blockchain is one of the technologies used in Bitcoin.

[578] It's a distributed database where all of the transactions are linked together using cryptographic proofs.

[579] Bitcoin is one implementation of a blockchain.

[580] And blockchain has now been used as a marketing term that means very little.

[581] It's kind of like Web 2 .0.

[582] We don't really know what it is.

[583] Right.

[584] It's a lot of hype.

[585] Are we have 3 .0 yet?

[586] Yeah.

[587] which is blockchain.

[588] Oh, okay.

[589] That's ironic, isn't it?

[590] It is.

[591] Yeah, and it's nebulous.

[592] But the point is that you can do more than just currency.

[593] Earlier we were talking a bit about trolling on Twitter and other platforms like that before we started the live broadcast.

[594] Well, think about what a troll is doing.

[595] What they're doing is they're stealing attention.

[596] They're taking attention without contributing anything back to the community.

[597] there's an interesting and fairly effective market solution to this which is instead of assigning someone to do oversight and decide who is and who isn't to troll and censor them you basically allow people to contribute again a minuscule fraction for the comments they like they up arrow like thumbs up but with each one of those likes and thumbs up you attach a 10 ,000th of a penny with it you know, irrelevant, small, tiny money.

[598] And then the people who write comments that are broadly appreciated that add value to the community earn a tiny bit of money.

[599] Not really anything serious.

[600] But if they try to comment, they have to spend a bit of that credit that they've earned, that reputation that they've earned.

[601] And if they're not a troll, it all comes out equal in the wash. They don't end up spending anything.

[602] They don't end up earning anything.

[603] It's just participation in the community.

[604] But if they're a troll, suddenly starts getting interesting because now it gets expensive to steal the attention of the community because the less you have positive feedback the more expensive it gets for you to post until eventually you're priced out.

[605] But does that also can kind of enforce or encourage confirmation bias because if you go to a website that's just completely ridiculous and it's a message board filled with morons and you argue with them it could cost you to argue with morons because they're going to downvote you.

[606] Yeah, it could.

[607] But you just choose to not comment.

[608] But you've got to think about this again across a broader economy with a broader set of forums in which, in some, you are valued experts and other you're the idiot who's arguing against the conventional wisdom.

[609] Yeah.

[610] And, you know, you can actually balance these things out.

[611] Well, if you go to a flat earth forum and argue with those people, it costs you money.

[612] Yes, I had an argument with someone about chemtrails.

[613] How did that go?

[614] It went really, it went very, very interestingly.

[615] I wasn't expecting to change their mind.

[616] And they really wanted to hear my opinion.

[617] And it was really interesting because we started the conversation.

[618] I said, okay, first, I'm a pilot.

[619] I have a pilot's license.

[620] I fly small planes.

[621] That puts you at an extreme advantage.

[622] Yes.

[623] This conversation.

[624] Well, you'd think.

[625] You would think that.

[626] And it's not appeal to authority.

[627] It's saying those nozzles that you're pointing at, I know what those are.

[628] I have to walk around the plane before I take off and make sure all of them are correctly attached in the place they should be doing the thing they should be doing.

[629] Otherwise, I don't survive the flight.

[630] So you are part of the Chem Trail Sprayers Association of America.

[631] Is that what you're saying?

[632] Yes.

[633] That was pretty much the conclusion we reached.

[634] What are those nozzles?

[635] Actually, in the, in the, the, the ones pointing forward are called pitot tubes, and they're used to measure the velocity of the aircraft through the air by a pressure differential.

[636] And the ones pointing backwards are usually to break up vortices.

[637] These are little swirly currents of errors that come off the wing that cause turbulence.

[638] And you want to break those up so they don't swirl.

[639] By the way, the trails are clouds.

[640] How long have you been a shill for the U .S. government?

[641] Indeed.

[642] Of course I'm a shill.

[643] I'm a shill for all of the things I'm interested in.

[644] Shut it off, Jamie.

[645] Yeah, I've had these conversations with so many people.

[646] It's so frustrating.

[647] You can present mountains of evidence if someone really, really doesn't want to believe, they really will not believe.

[648] Well, there's also, I mean, it's been going on forever.

[649] I mean, if you go back to the 1940s, there's pictures black and white photos from World War I, or World War II, rather, where you can see planes leaving behind these enormous contrails.

[650] So it's a stupid argument.

[651] I mean, it really is.

[652] I mean, we've known for a long time that depending upon how much moisture is in the atmosphere, when planes pass through it, they will create clouds.

[653] And it's just real simple.

[654] It changes the temperature of the air, and it creates clouds.

[655] And it's usually on hazy days.

[656] Not only that, but NASA has a website where you can go to it, and it will accurately predict contrails.

[657] Look at that.

[658] That is, those are from propeller engines in the 1940s.

[659] And what's happening is the propeller is compressing the air.

[660] And when it compresses the air, the change in pressure changes the dew point.

[661] And the dew point is what determines whether the air moisture condenses into a visible vapor.

[662] Yes.

[663] Into droplets that are clouds.

[664] And so by pushing a thing through the air, you're pressing on the air.

[665] And when you press on the air, that causes consequences.

[666] condensation to form, and that condensation follows you in a circular cloud behind the plane.

[667] Yeah.

[668] And this happens at any plane, propeller plane.

[669] I've done it in a four -seater, Cessna, that's smaller than a fiat sedan, right?

[670] And on a wet day, you can see little trails coming off the tips of the wings.

[671] And I'm pretty sure I didn't put any spray nozzles there or flip the switch.

[672] I didn't.

[673] I saw the switch.

[674] It said chemtrail them, and I didn't flip it.

[675] I didn't.

[676] You don't how much liquid you would have to have in your plane in order to spray these enormous jets across the sky.

[677] I mean, it would be insane.

[678] It would be insane.

[679] I mean, if the entire plane was filled up, I mean, filled, and you would have so much liquid that it would be visible from the ground, floating in space.

[680] And then you talk to people.

[681] You know, I did that television show on sci -fi called Joe Rogan Questions Everything.

[682] And one of the things that I questioned was chemtrail.

[683] So I talked to a bunch of chemtrail, air quote, experts.

[684] And one of these guys had this study that he had done on water.

[685] And this standing water study was proving that the spraying in the air was making aluminum, was putting aluminum in the water, in the water supply.

[686] And so he had this water tested.

[687] And so he showed me the test.

[688] I'm going over the test.

[689] I go, well, it says sludge.

[690] And he goes, well, it was water.

[691] I gave them water.

[692] I go, okay.

[693] But it says sludge.

[694] Like the laboratory that you sent this stuff to says sludge.

[695] And he was like, well, what is exactly sludge?

[696] What's the definition?

[697] I'm like, well, let's Google it.

[698] So we googled sludge.

[699] And what sludge is is water mixed with dirt.

[700] So I said, okay, so your water mixed with dirt contains aluminum.

[701] Do you know how much aluminum there is in dirt?

[702] Because it's the exact amount that they tested when they tested the water that you had with dirt.

[703] So what happened is your dirt tested positive for being dirt.

[704] And you're using that as proof that the government is spraying the skies above everybody's head.

[705] And you want to talk about like a piss poor, cost ineffective shitbag program that does absolutely nothing.

[706] Chemtrails would be it because it's not doing.

[707] anything.

[708] Like, no one's getting sick.

[709] There's no, like, rise in illnesses.

[710] There's no, like, mind control going on.

[711] There's nothing.

[712] There's, there is no mind control going on.

[713] There is no mind control going on.

[714] There is no mind control going on.

[715] I mean, it's the dumbest fucking thing.

[716] Would it be easier to just put it in your municipal water supply?

[717] Yeah, well, I mean, it's arguments that are doing that too.

[718] It's, well, of course, of course.

[719] They, they move it with the planes to the municipal water supplies.

[720] Yes, they're spraying, it drops, it falls in the water supply, and And then you drink it.

[721] Something like that.

[722] Anyway.

[723] They're spraying themselves, too, by the way, but they're immune to it because they're lizards.

[724] You know, they're down here too.

[725] So you spray the sky indiscriminately.

[726] I mean, I guarantee you some Illuminatis are getting sprayed.

[727] I'm going to get some hate mail for this.

[728] I know it.

[729] Well, yeah, for sure.

[730] We're getting it right now.

[731] People are wiping the Cheetos off their greasy little fat fucking fingers right now and hammering at the keyboards, ready to call us shills.

[732] It's the dumbest.

[733] It's what, um, there's a guy who runs, um, What is the website?

[734] Metabunk?

[735] Metabunk .com?

[736] What is his name?

[737] Mick?

[738] Anyway, he calls it the training wheels for conspiracy theorists because it's above your head.

[739] You're seeing it all the time.

[740] You're like, what is it going on up there?

[741] Why is that look like a cloud?

[742] Like, what is that?

[743] And he started thinking, man, the government's doing something secretly.

[744] Mick West.

[745] Yes, Mick West.

[746] Thank you.

[747] Oh, Metabunk debunk.

[748] Look, Mick West is a shill.

[749] He's a shill.

[750] Debunk, debunk, debunk, debunk, debunk, debunk.

[751] debunk debunk debunk he got death threats and hate man when he came on that tv show with me yeah no this is the guy yeah this is how does this hedge fund manager make so much money look at him just look at him sweating oh look at his look at this annual returns of 13 % 24 % or even 91 % since 2013 he doesn't tell anybody how it's done either you see it's just a computer program you have to pay for a decade up front and if you leave he gets half the Oh, gee, I wonder how it works.

[752] Jesus fucking Christ, you crook.

[753] Clients, hold on a second.

[754] Clients aren't sure how it's done.

[755] And Joseph A. Meyer Jr., the man behind the obscure hedge fund, Al Arjunn LP, is keeping his cards close.

[756] Oh, Jesus Christ.

[757] Invest most of his client's money in safe treasury bonds.

[758] Yeah, it's safe as fuck if you can't take your money out for 10 years.

[759] You know everybody in there can't take their money out for 10 years.

[760] That's insanity.

[761] that's insane that that's that kind of like I mean you don't know this guy but look at that what's that what is that I don't know I mean if you had a guess if I had to guess I'm going to give you two options yeah legit or scam yes I don't know I would say it is most likely a Ponzi scheme which is outrageous something people throw around a lot but Here's the interesting thing is, why do these schemes happen?

[762] Look at his offer.

[763] He offers an extraordinary guarantee.

[764] With Arjun, you never lose money.

[765] First of all, what kind of name is that?

[766] I think that's actually part of the definition of an investment fraud is guaranteed returns.

[767] So if you make a guarantee like that, it's usually one of the triggers that gets people investigated.

[768] Well, he doesn't, but you never lose money.

[769] This is a great investment.

[770] That's fantastic investment.

[771] You should get involved.

[772] Yeah, absolutely.

[773] Maybe put some Bitcoin in that and just solidify it.

[774] Yeah.

[775] Okay.

[776] I'm going to do the opposite.

[777] If you invest your money in Bitcoin, you will lose money.

[778] Whoa.

[779] You will.

[780] You will gain money.

[781] You will lose money.

[782] You will lose money.

[783] You will lose money.

[784] We don't know.

[785] No one is, and I want to be really careful about this because many people go out and they push these things as investments.

[786] And you can have a lot of volatility.

[787] And sometimes when you have a lot of faulty, some people get lucky and they make a lot of money.

[788] And some people are great at picking their moment and they make some money.

[789] They bail out.

[790] They make a ton of money.

[791] Like right now, we're at $600.

[792] If you bought it back when it was like, what was it the lowest point?

[793] The lowest, lowest point?

[794] Lowest, lowest.

[795] About a thousandth of a dollar.

[796] A thousandth of a dollar to $600, you said it's now?

[797] Yeah, you could.

[798] Yeah.

[799] So, I mean.

[800] If you put in like a fucking.

[801] Big pile of money.

[802] Yes, five grand and if you took it out the wrong moment you would lose all of it And this is why this isn't this isn't a speculative instrument Right, people can speculate in it Isn't it?

[803] I'm sorry to interrupt you, but isn't the well kind of poisoned for the financial well with Speculative investing like what what people are doing?

[804] It seems like it shouldn't be legal and what's really fucked up about it is that they're doing it with algorithms and they're gambling and they're they're buying and selling within like a fraction of a second and they're doing it the point where there was a radio lab podcast where they talked about how investment firms did you see that one or listen to that one i have heard that one yeah where investment firms moved their servers closer to the exchange so that you get in their their their orders and their exchanges quicker yes mawana new jersey where the data centers of the, none of the stock trading happens in Manhattan.

[805] It happens across the water in New Jersey as a data center there where probably the largest amount of money moves ever.

[806] And they have measured runs of fiber, meaning that in order to be fair, the fiber optic cable between the service that do the trading and every one of the racks that are in the room are measured to be the equal length so that the speed of light limitation across a room of 100 feet does not advantage one customer over another.

[807] Isn't that incredible?

[808] We're talking microseconds, right?

[809] Yeah, well, people have been forced because of this to move their offices from the middle of the country where they were to right there or rent space where their servers are right there.

[810] It's really, it's so bizarre because a lot of this stuff is actually done with computers.

[811] So these computers are operating on an algorithm, the algorithms recognize patterns, they start these exchanges and they buy and sell and buy and sell and buy and sell and do all of this within fractions of a second yeah over the last decade most trading floors have seen 90 % of their traders disappear so there are empty rooms you can see photos all that's online where it shows before and after photos of very big banks like uBS and uh jp morgan goldman sachs companies like that and you see their trading floor and it is empty um because a lot of that has now moved to algorithmic trading so strange What a weird, weird way to invest and buy it.

[812] Oh, thank you.

[813] Look at that.

[814] Oh, my God.

[815] That's the before and after.

[816] And it's not because they're making less money, right?

[817] That's incredible.

[818] This is not a downturn.

[819] During this time, they've actually made more money.

[820] But there's something about those stock exchange videos that were in movies.

[821] You know, buy, buy, sell, sell.

[822] And they've got their hands up and they're, I want two of these and five of these.

[823] And they're holding up pieces of paper.

[824] That is so daunting.

[825] All that stuff is so confusing.

[826] to a person on the outside looking at that and trying to figure out what the fuck those people are doing it seems exciting and chaotic and vibrant but so confusing right but that is that is the American economy right now essentially it's based on confidence that's all that's happening yeah so should we talk about a slightly different topic sure whatever you want I want to tell you about some of the new developments that are happening in Bitcoin which I find interesting.

[827] And I'm not going to show, because this is not really about a company or a specific product, but I want to talk about one of the things that has me excited, which is a, what happens when you combine technology that looks very much like peer -to -peer, Napster, or BitTorrent, with a merchant service like eBay.

[828] And you create this hybrid technology, which is a completely peer -to -peer store service called OpenBazaar.

[829] And this is basically a system where you run on your computer some software and you can open a store to deliver either physical goods or virtual goods, have them listed, have them found by others, and then all of the payments are done in Bitcoin.

[830] So by decentralizing the payment system, We can also decentralize the store system completely.

[831] And it is a completely borderless, multinational open and peer -to -peer open -source software merchant system running on top of Bitcoin.

[832] Which I just find fascinating, the ability for anyone to open a store, especially in countries where you don't have eBay, right?

[833] and be able to sell goods and services anywhere in the world and receive payments in in bitcoin and is this operational right now yep and i'm selling that book uh on open bazaar so how does one access open bazaar to the to the ludite they they run software no fees no restrictions and they downloads the software run it on their computer uh fund the bitcoin wallet and which sits on their computer and which sits on their computer They don't have to give their money to anyone.

[834] There's no intermediaries.

[835] And you buy directly from the store, and the person running the store is running the same software.

[836] Well, let's see what some of the things that they have available.

[837] We went to openbazaar .org.

[838] I have to download the program, so I'm going to find another way to look at it.

[839] Oh, okay.

[840] Yeah, if you go to Duo Search, as a search engine on top, D -U -O -S -E -A -R

[841].C