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David Veksler joins the show to discuss Bitcoin basics to two extreme novices - your host and co-host. Though we barely scratch the surface, we hope this show is informative.
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Episode 40 (29 minutes) was recorded at 10 PM CET, on December 17, 2021, with Ringr app.. Editing and post-production was done with the podcast maker, Alitu. Transcript is provided by Veed.io.
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Today we're interviewing David Veksler, who is
Speaker:a partner in Vellum Capital and also
Speaker:creator of the Bitcoin consultancy.
Speaker:David, how are you?
Speaker:I am great, thanks, Blair.
Speaker:Well, you're welcome.
Speaker:Both Martin and I are interested in this Bitcoin
Speaker:phenomenon and we thought we'd have you on to
Speaker:kind of flesh out some of the history of
Speaker:it and tell us what actually what is cryptocurrency?
Speaker:Sure.
Speaker:Please go ahead.
Speaker:Where can I start?
Speaker:I think if you remember one thing
Speaker:about this conversation, it is the why.
Speaker:Why do we need an alternative to Fiat money?
Speaker:And the story of money is a long story because
Speaker:as long as we've had civilization, we have had money.
Speaker:And of course, there are many kinds of money.
Speaker:Some places cattle are still uses money.
Speaker:In some places seashells, in some places it's
Speaker:been big rocks that are like family heirlooms.
Speaker:But sometime a few thousand years ago, we
Speaker:found that gold was a very good money
Speaker:because it was scarce and shiny and durable.
Speaker:And so gold has been money for all of human
Speaker:history and pretty much every human civilization until 1913, which
Speaker:is when the Federal Reserve Bank was created.
Speaker:And at that point, pretty much every other government in
Speaker:the world followed and moved to a Fiat money.
Speaker:And so before we talk about what Bitcoin is, let's
Speaker:talk about what the problem with Fiat money is.
Speaker:Yes, let's do that.
Speaker:The basic problem is that the reason that Fiat
Speaker:money was created to replace gold as the global
Speaker:money was to give governments more power.
Speaker:So before Fiat money, if you wanted to have a war,
Speaker:you have to pay the soldiers salary and you have to
Speaker:pay for the cannons and the ships and so on.
Speaker:And you have to do that through two ways.
Speaker:You either raise taxes or you borrowed money.
Speaker:And then I gave you the gold and you use the
Speaker:gold to buy whatever you need to run the war.
Speaker:But with Fiat money to do that, because everybody's using
Speaker:your money, and all you have to do is print
Speaker:more money and you can use that money to redirect
Speaker:the entire economy to the pursuit of the war.
Speaker:And so that's a big reason why we had
Speaker:a world war shortly after the central banks moved
Speaker:up to gold standard 1913, because now they could
Speaker:redirect the total economic output of the state of
Speaker:all States to the pursuit of the war.
Speaker:You could arbitrarily redirect industry
Speaker:just by printing more money.
Speaker:And that's exactly what they did and doing more bonds
Speaker:and use that to reject the entire civilization to war.
Speaker:And of course, there have been many other
Speaker:goals that governments have pursued Besides war.
Speaker:War is just one of the most destructive ones.
Speaker:But when you have the Great Depression and likewise,
Speaker:government had major new programs that were paid for
Speaker:through printing money instead of raising taxes.
Speaker:And so the ability to have Fiat money
Speaker:basically allows governments enormous power over society.
Speaker:That is kind of hidden.
Speaker:So whereas the taxes, taxes are, you pay
Speaker:taxes, it's visible, you know, how much of
Speaker:your wealth is being redirected to the government.
Speaker:But with money, with Fiat money, through inflation,
Speaker:governments can, in a hidden way, redirect society
Speaker:and capital markets to whatever they want.
Speaker:And they've been doing that.
Speaker:And one major motivation that politicians have, because the world
Speaker:is now mostly run by democracies is to make the
Speaker:economic numbers go up, make the GDP numbers go up.
Speaker:So when elections are coming up, there's
Speaker:a strong motivation for politicians to print
Speaker:more money and lower the interest rates.
Speaker:They lower the interest rates to create more
Speaker:investments, to loan money to give to the
Speaker:people, and that makes them more popular.
Speaker:The problem is that when you lower the
Speaker:interest rates, we direct capital to new spending,
Speaker:but you don't have the corresponding savings.
Speaker:So I'm sorry for the kind of lesson
Speaker:here, but it is important to understand that
Speaker:all human progress depends on savings.
Speaker:So when you have the caveman fisherman who caught fish
Speaker:with his bare hands and he wanted to be more
Speaker:productive, he would have to set aside some fish, catch
Speaker:some extra fish and not eat it.
Speaker:You would have to save some fish to
Speaker:build some fish hooks or build a net.
Speaker:And so you take the savings and
Speaker:invest that time in increasing its capital.
Speaker:And so that's how all savings work.
Speaker:We set aside some consumption to invest in
Speaker:increasing our capital for a better future.
Speaker:And that's how human progress has been happening
Speaker:for thousands of years until if you have
Speaker:money, the governments are manipulating the interest rates.
Speaker:So when you lower the interest rate, you create
Speaker:a lot more investment, but you actually decrease savings.
Speaker:So that's what happens is suddenly you
Speaker:have all these new ventures happening that
Speaker:are not backed by corresponding savings.
Speaker:And so all these ventures are malnourishment.
Speaker:They start failing because they
Speaker:don't have the corresponding savings.
Speaker:You don't have the factories and the web developers
Speaker:and the resources, the oil to funnel the investment.
Speaker:And so it fails.
Speaker:And that's how you get business cycles.
Speaker:So the 20th century and now the 21st century
Speaker:has been a story of one business cycle after
Speaker:another because governments are manipulating interest rates, political gain,
Speaker:and that is made possible by having that money.
Speaker:And so this person, Satoshi Nakamoto, he was quite explicit
Speaker:when he created Bitcoin one day in August 2008.
Speaker:This is the problem he solving.
Speaker:He said, you cannot trust the central
Speaker:banks, to be honest with the money.
Speaker:It's causing all this economic instability.
Speaker:And I have an idea to fix it.
Speaker:And I'm going to call it Bitcoin.
Speaker:So it was very clearly libertarian
Speaker:who wanted to fix the money.
Speaker:And he said that Bitcoin is going to
Speaker:have a hard cap of 21 million.
Speaker:If you remember one thing about Bitcoin, it's this.
Speaker:There's only ever going to be 21 million Bitcoin.
Speaker:And as of two days ago, 90% of all
Speaker:Bitcoin that will ever exist has already been mined.
Speaker:The other 10% will be mined by the year 21, 40.
Speaker:And so it's a scarce asset.
Speaker:If you take all the gold in the world, it
Speaker:will not quite fill two Olympic size swimming pools.
Speaker:It's also scarce because when the price of
Speaker:gold goes up, you can mine more gold.
Speaker:But when the price of Bitcoin goes
Speaker:up, you cannot mine more Bitcoin.
Speaker:Bitcoin is designed to situate the supply
Speaker:of Bitcoin is constant, independent of how
Speaker:much resources is dedicated to Bitcoin mining.
Speaker:Let me ask you this, and again, I'm a
Speaker:novice, but I'm not afraid to ask dumb questions.
Speaker:Let's say in the stock market going to take my dollars
Speaker:and I'm going to buy a share or 100 shares of
Speaker:stock in hopes that that stock will increase in value.
Speaker:So I do that now, since there is a limited
Speaker:supply of Bitcoin, how is Bitcoin increasing in value?
Speaker:And it's only that limited supply?
Speaker:Let's say I had ten bitcoins and I bought them
Speaker:at $100 each and now they're what, $60,000 each?
Speaker:Now 50 ish.
Speaker:So how did that get to be 50 ish?
Speaker:Think of it as real estate.
Speaker:If you have a plot of land and some number
Speaker:of houses, the demand for that land keeps going up.
Speaker:But there's only some fixed quantity of land.
Speaker:And so if you have some foresight and you bought
Speaker:up ten plots of land, demand keeps going up.
Speaker:And so you can sell it for
Speaker:more than what you paid for it.
Speaker:Or with gold, it's a scarce asset.
Speaker:Demand keeps going up, but the quantity is the same.
Speaker:Like any scarce asset with a fixed quantity,
Speaker:the value of each unit will increase. Okay.
Speaker:I know there seems to be
Speaker:a plethora of cryptos out there.
Speaker:Amazon is going to create their own,
Speaker:I think, and Facebook is the same.
Speaker:But I know that Bitcoin and Ethereum seem to
Speaker:be the two best or two leading ones.
Speaker:Is that correct?
Speaker:That is correct.
Speaker:So I will start by saying that
Speaker:Bitcoin is unique in the space.
Speaker:It was the first is the only
Speaker:one with a 13 year track record. Okay.
Speaker:And what's most important about Bitcoin is this
Speaker:commitment to a hard cap of 21 million.
Speaker:So compare that to Ethereum, which
Speaker:has a completely arbitrary supply schedule.
Speaker:So the creation of Ethereum
Speaker:basically changes year to year.
Speaker:According to the Ethereum leadership team in the community,
Speaker:Bitcoin has the hardest commitment to fix supply.
Speaker:And so I think Bitcoin is going to capture the
Speaker:vast majority, maybe 95% of the value of the space.
Speaker:But you should know that each asset is
Speaker:a different business model for Bitcoin is money.
Speaker:Ethereum is a smart contract platform.
Speaker:They solve different problems.
Speaker:Okay, now, you mentioned the term mining a moment ago.
Speaker:So Bitcoin is it actually a coin or what is it?
Speaker:Is it a digital asset? What is it? Digital gold?
Speaker:It's a scarce asset.
Speaker:And the way that the asset has
Speaker:been created is through solving hardback problems.
Speaker:And we call that mining just as an analogy.
Speaker:But essentially Bitcoin is created by people completing
Speaker:the miners competing to solve difficult math problems.
Speaker:And the first person to solve that math
Speaker:problem gets each new chunk of Bitcoin.
Speaker:And so the supply of Bitcoin that we have
Speaker:is basically those miners selling the Bitcoin they mined
Speaker:by solving those problems to the Bitcoin community.
Speaker:I noticed lately I've been listening to
Speaker:some other Bitcoin specific podcasts, and they
Speaker:use the term Hodel and defy.
Speaker:I think Hodl means hang on for
Speaker:dear life or something like that.
Speaker:Can you describe what that actually means?
Speaker:I'll start by saying that many people
Speaker:in the space are novice investors.
Speaker:They're really being exposed to financial
Speaker:markets for the first time.
Speaker:So it's easy to get in trouble
Speaker:and get emotional and lose your shirt.
Speaker:And so Huddle is a typo, which was
Speaker:background to hang on for your life.
Speaker:But it basically means think long term,
Speaker:don't try to make short term gains.
Speaker:It's really just that concept.
Speaker:So it's like buy and hold.
Speaker:Buy and hold.
Speaker:Yes, that's all it is. Okay.
Speaker:And DeFi.
Speaker:What is the DeFi? I'm sorry.
Speaker:So the origin of literally some guy was
Speaker:drunk and he was typing that I can't
Speaker:make smart decisions while I'm drunk.
Speaker:So I'm going to hold on.
Speaker:And he meant to say hold.
Speaker:That is the whole thing. I see.
Speaker:All right, so Bitcoin is money, but
Speaker:there's many other digital tokens or digital
Speaker:assets that solve different problems.
Speaker:And so defy is an attempt to create
Speaker:an alternative to the traditional financial system.
Speaker:So now we have this.
Speaker:What's the word for it?
Speaker:Becoming a CFI?
Speaker:Cfi is centralized finance.
Speaker:In other words, all the financial
Speaker:stuff that we have before.
Speaker:Whereas DeFi is decentralized, it
Speaker:has no official organization.
Speaker:It has nobody officially behind it.
Speaker:It has no legal entity.
Speaker:It is all a network of autonomous smart
Speaker:contracts that are providing financial services, whether it's
Speaker:financial markets or autonomous corporations or property deeds.
Speaker:D Five is decentralized finance, where no person or
Speaker:station can control the financial entity through lead.
Speaker:Also term Web three or Web 3.0 or something like that.
Speaker:So Web three is a clever bit of marketing to
Speaker:say that this is the feature of the web, but
Speaker:Web three is simply a set of tools that we
Speaker:use to interact with the smart contracts on the blockchain.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:I think the chief aspect of Bitcoin, what has
Speaker:me interested is that what we've already talked about,
Speaker:but I don't think we can be emphasized enough.
Speaker:Is the decentralization of it.
Speaker:The separation of state and economics, if
Speaker:you will, because that's what the secular
Speaker:Foxhole we're chiefly for the separation of
Speaker:state, religion, state and economic state.
Speaker:And thought you get the
Speaker:government as small as possible.
Speaker:Bitcoin is a separation of the state and money.
Speaker:Bitcoin has no CEO, it has no leader.
Speaker:It has no company behind it.
Speaker:It is a community where anybody can contribute to
Speaker:it, and all decisions are made by consensus.
Speaker:What do you think of things like Coinbase
Speaker:or dozens and dozens of other, I guess,
Speaker:entry platforms for people to look at?
Speaker:Are some of them, as you said
Speaker:earlier, are they scams or offhand?
Speaker:Let's talk about two different things.
Speaker:There's the infrastructure, the ecosystem, providing
Speaker:services to interact with crypto. Okay.
Speaker:So if you want to buy Bitcoin, you have to buy
Speaker:it from somebody who ultimately the chain goes to a minor.
Speaker:But miners don't sell directly to consumers.
Speaker:So you need some kind of
Speaker:coordinator to buy Bitcoin from.
Speaker:And right now, that's mostly centralized entities.
Speaker:So Coinbase is just a marketplace
Speaker:where you can think of it.
Speaker:Miners make the Bitcoin available for sale and
Speaker:then consumers can go and buy it.
Speaker:It's perfectly legitimate right now.
Speaker:We need to have the coordination. Okay.
Speaker:So how could it be easier as
Speaker:we are newbies and novices in this?
Speaker:We talked in the green room, something called
Speaker:Podcasting 2.0 applications, and how you could stream
Speaker:parts of Bitcoin called Satoshi's by listening to
Speaker:a podcast using these new applications.
Speaker:But at this time, I think it's maybe a
Speaker:couple of thousand podcasters using this in total, it
Speaker:could be a 4 million podcast out there, but
Speaker:probably active podcast or could be an estimate guest
Speaker:like 500,000 or something like that.
Speaker:So how do you see that it would be easier to buy and
Speaker:sell, but at the same time be safe and not be scammed.
Speaker:And I will come back to
Speaker:that question also about scam coins.
Speaker:Well, let me answer one question, which is,
Speaker:so if you want to get into crypto
Speaker:and own Bitcoin, this is what you do.
Speaker:You sign up for a Bitcoin exchange.
Speaker:I recommend gemini.com.
Speaker:A Coinbase is another good one.
Speaker:In different countries, there
Speaker:are different options available.
Speaker:I think Coinbase is many
Speaker:countries, Gemini's in many countries.
Speaker:So for a fee of 1% or less, you can buy some Bitcoin.
Speaker:And here's the important part.
Speaker:You take possession of it.
Speaker:So when you buy Bitcoin in
Speaker:exchange, you don't own Bitcoin.
Speaker:All you own is a claim on Bitcoin.
Speaker:So when you take possession of it, you would
Speaker:draw the Bitcoin from an exchange to your wallet.
Speaker:And what I have is a hardware wallet, which is a
Speaker:little physical device, and it stores the keys to my Bitcoin.
Speaker:And that is why I secure it. Okay. Yeah.
Speaker:My next question would be what is a hot
Speaker:wallet and a cold wallet and so on? Go ahead.
Speaker:Hot wallet is basically one that
Speaker:is connected to the Internet.
Speaker:So if you have a wallet on your phone or
Speaker:your computer, those devices are connected to the Internet.
Speaker:Be stored at an exchange.
Speaker:Those are hot wallets.
Speaker:Somebody could potentially hack into that and steal it.
Speaker:And I work with a lot of people, literally thousands,
Speaker:that have had their Bitcoin stolen or decrypted stolen.
Speaker:The cold wallet is not connected to the Internet.
Speaker:There's a few kinds.
Speaker:One is a little hardware device.
Speaker:There's a few vendors making them treasure
Speaker:ledger, keep key, our old vendors.
Speaker:And they are devices.
Speaker:Basically, they only work when they're plugged in and all
Speaker:they do is they store Bitcoin and sign transactions.
Speaker:What you should do is, Besides that, write down your
Speaker:Bitcoin seed words that generate your wallet on a paper.
Speaker:What I recommend is you get a steel plate,
Speaker:they can buy them for $40, and you either
Speaker:etch the seed on the steel plate, or they
Speaker:have little leather cards that you slide in there.
Speaker:And so that allows your seat
Speaker:to be waterproof, fire proof.
Speaker:Your entire home can burn down.
Speaker:And that hardened steel is fine.
Speaker:Oh, wow.
Speaker:I've never heard of that one. That's interesting.
Speaker:Now, was your background in finance before
Speaker:you, I guess, switched over to Bitcoin.
Speaker:So in 2013, I was living in Shanghai, I lived
Speaker:in China for five years, and I was asked to
Speaker:build a Bitcoin exchange just as a technologist.
Speaker:And so I did.
Speaker:And that was my introduction to the space.
Speaker:And that's when I started.
Speaker:That's when I was sold on the mission.
Speaker:I've been active and a student
Speaker:of Austrian economics since 2003.
Speaker:I was an intern at the Mises Institute in 2004.
Speaker:And so that was the connection that
Speaker:told me that Bitcoin is important.
Speaker:And it took a few years, but ultimately
Speaker:I decided 2013 to invest in it.
Speaker:And yeah, I've been active in the space since then.
Speaker:Finance. It came much later.
Speaker:Around 2018, I started the hedge fund.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:And David, you have an interesting mission there regarding
Speaker:how to say clean up the space in a
Speaker:way and help people have lost keys and others,
Speaker:but also all the scams out there.
Speaker:So one thing is if you go through the list
Speaker:with legit cryptocurrencies and to learn which to pick.
Speaker:And now we are told about some safe ones in a way.
Speaker:But for example, I don't know if we should tell
Speaker:about names, but I know here in Europe heard about
Speaker:horror stories or how people have been fooled by that.
Speaker:They are not really cryptocurrency.
Speaker:It's more made up and people can lose money off that.
Speaker:And people continue with this.
Speaker:Could you tell a bit about this project?
Speaker:How many entries have you gotten and
Speaker:could you see some picture of it?
Speaker:Regarding scams, yes.
Speaker:So Bitcoin is software and anybody can go
Speaker:and make a copy of that software.
Speaker:And many people have there's
Speaker:now over 20,000 different cryptocurrencies.
Speaker:Again, it's just as simple as copy paste software.
Speaker:Change a few parameters, launch your own cryptocurrency
Speaker:and people see the trillion dollar value of
Speaker:Bitcoin and they want to make some money.
Speaker:Not to say that everybody wants to do that.
Speaker:There are some well meaning projects, but the
Speaker:vast majority are just get rich quick schemes.
Speaker:And so that's why I always say, if
Speaker:you're a beginner, just buy and hold Bitcoin.
Speaker:Just focus on Bitcoin.
Speaker:Don't buy anything else.
Speaker:Don't be lured by stories of 1000
Speaker:export 100,000 extra returns last year.
Speaker:Just focus on Bitcoin.
Speaker:It's the only crypto with a hard
Speaker:cap, with a twelve year track record.
Speaker:So each different crypto is a
Speaker:different proposition, different business model.
Speaker:They are trying to do different things.
Speaker:Bitcoin is just pure money.
Speaker:Many others are trying to do something very different.
Speaker:And if you want to evaluate it, you have
Speaker:to look at whether the business model makes sense.
Speaker:Like there's one token, which is a coin
Speaker:for dentist offices to pay for dental procedures.
Speaker:It makes no sense whatsoever why you need
Speaker:a separate money to pay your dentist.
Speaker:It's ridiculous.
Speaker:And there's literally thousands, tens of thousands of
Speaker:projects that don't make any business sense whatsoever.
Speaker:There's the gambling ones and there's hot ones and
Speaker:there's all kinds of projects that make no sense.
Speaker:So if you're needless space, just buy some
Speaker:Bitcoin, store it on your wallet, don't invest
Speaker:it, don't fall for trading schemes. Really.
Speaker:The scams out there are not nothing new.
Speaker:As long as they've been money, they've been scams.
Speaker:And the same advice applies.
Speaker:Keep your money safe, investorly, if
Speaker:you can invest it at all. I agree. Thank you for that.
Speaker:El Salvador has been in the press the
Speaker:last week or two about apparently the President
Speaker:or Chancellor of El Salvador has created a
Speaker:Bitcoin sector or something to that effect.
Speaker:Or is this whole country going to Bitcoin?
Speaker:I'm not sure.
Speaker:Do you know anything about that? Yes.
Speaker:So 20 years ago, El Salvador admitted they
Speaker:screwed up their own currency and they dollarized.
Speaker:They said, we are not responsible
Speaker:enough to have our own money.
Speaker:We're just going to use a dollar.
Speaker:And for 20 years they've been doing that until 2020,
Speaker:when the President said that we no longer want to
Speaker:put all our eggs in a dollar basket.
Speaker:We don't trust the dollar.
Speaker:And the President Buckley said that we're going
Speaker:to add a second legal tender to the
Speaker:dollar and that's going to be Bitcoin.
Speaker:So now they have two legal
Speaker:tender, currencies Bitcoin and the dollar.
Speaker:And they're building a whole ecosystem
Speaker:because it is legal tender.
Speaker:You don't pay capital gains tax when you sell it.
Speaker:There's all kinds of legal implications
Speaker:of it being legal tender.
Speaker:And so that's attracting a lot of business to salad
Speaker:or I have no idea if it will be successful.
Speaker:It's not exactly a free market economy, it's a
Speaker:tiny little country in South America, so I have
Speaker:no idea if it's going to work.
Speaker:But that is the premise behind it.
Speaker:Does every person there use Bitcoin, for example,
Speaker:when they go to the supermarket or whatnot
Speaker:we had here in the links here that
Speaker:Blair found article called Crypto and the Global
Speaker:Financial System on a newsletter talking about how
Speaker:to practical use cryptocurrency in your daily life.
Speaker:So the government of El Salvador trying
Speaker:to make it easy for any business.
Speaker:Actually, I think they passed a law that
Speaker:legal tender means you must accept it for
Speaker:payment of all debts, private and public.
Speaker:That is the definition of legal tender.
Speaker:All businesses must accept Bitcoin.
Speaker:The government is trying to provide the infrastructure.
Speaker:So it's not exactly a free market
Speaker:movement because legal tender means the government
Speaker:is forcing you to accept us money.
Speaker:I don't support legal tender laws
Speaker:of any kind, including for Bitcoin.
Speaker:But regardless, it seems that they have managed to
Speaker:enable every business to accept Bitcoin as payments and
Speaker:then convert it to dollars that they choose.
Speaker:I'm sorry. Go ahead, Martin. Yeah.
Speaker:You recently wrote a blog post about cryptocurrency
Speaker:and Bitcoin versus gold and you talked about
Speaker:the great introduction to economics and history.
Speaker:Have you seen any examples?
Speaker:For example, remember, I don't know if that's the
Speaker:case, but a company like Gold Money or other
Speaker:have you seen any experiment with that, linking real
Speaker:money like gold and silver to cryptocurrencies?
Speaker:So you can already buy a crypto
Speaker:token which is linked to gold bullionian?
Speaker:I just heard about a new project which
Speaker:allows you to take delivery of gold bullion,
Speaker:basically buying and redeeming crypto tokens.
Speaker:So that is already possible.
Speaker:I think if you want to buy gold, buy gold.
Speaker:You don't need a separate digital token for that.
Speaker:But if you enter that, that's already an option.
Speaker:There's someone in the Austrian school who they
Speaker:dismiss at the Bitcoin and they say there's
Speaker:staunch gold and silver is what we need.
Speaker:And they look at Bitcoin as fad.
Speaker:Obviously, I think you disagree with that.
Speaker:So I have a podcast coming up where I'm going to
Speaker:go deep into Austrian theory and talk about why that's wrong.
Speaker:I mean, I was in nut school.
Speaker:I bought gold bullion back in 2008.
Speaker:It was around for a while and I was
Speaker:accumulating gold, but obviously changed my mind on that.
Speaker:There's technical reasons why some Austrians are skeptical of
Speaker:Bitcoin that I won't go into right now. Sure.
Speaker:But I think it's mostly for traditionalism gold has
Speaker:a history going back to all of human history.
Speaker:Bitcoin is very new, and so they dismiss it.
Speaker:I think if you learn more, understand what it
Speaker:is, you'll be a lot more open to it.
Speaker:What are some of the books you've read
Speaker:or authors that you know that you'd recommend
Speaker:to our listeners and to us?
Speaker:If you read one book about Bitcoin, it's
Speaker:called The Bitcoin Standard by Saifedean Ammous.
Speaker:The Bitcoin standard.
Speaker:And it will tell you the why of Bitcoin.
Speaker:It's not technical at all.
Speaker:It will tell you why money is bad and
Speaker:we need to have a sound hard money system.
Speaker:Ammous just wrote a second book called The Fiat Standard.
Speaker:So the first one is the Bitcoin Standard
Speaker:which talks about why we had Bitcoin.
Speaker:And the second book is The Fiat Standard which
Speaker:talks about why Fiat money is so bad.
Speaker:So he's a little how can I put it all
Speaker:dramatic sometimes my taste, he blames Fiat money for bad
Speaker:art and that food and war and everything.
Speaker:But in any case, it's still a great book.
Speaker:The second book that I like is Bitcoin Hard Money.
Speaker:You can't with I don't know if you like
Speaker:to curse on the show, but that is the
Speaker:title of the book and it's very good.
Speaker:That's great.
Speaker:Thanks for tips about that.
Speaker:And maybe we could talk about that like a new
Speaker:thing also have been popping up in Twitter feed and
Speaker:others like about who is the real Satoshi.
Speaker:And it was recently a guy in Australia and
Speaker:it was some court case and also what's NTF
Speaker:because I've seen a very NFC actually.
Speaker:So the important thing about Satoshi and we don't know if
Speaker:it's a person or a team, we really have no idea.
Speaker:It does not matter who it is.
Speaker:So there are some fraudsters who claim to be Satoshi.
Speaker:The truth is if Satoshi wanted to come out publicly, he
Speaker:could do so with certainty because he has the keys to
Speaker:the first Bitcoin that he might, he might at this point
Speaker:a few tens of billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin.
Speaker:He has the keys to the Bitcoin and it'd be
Speaker:trivial for the founder to prove that he's a Toshi.
Speaker:But the point of thing is that doesn't matter.
Speaker:There's no Bitcoin CEO, there's no leader, there's
Speaker:nobody that has any unique power of Bitcoin.
Speaker:So Satoshi will very likely never come out
Speaker:publicly because they would only hurt Bitcoin.
Speaker:He intentionally was anonymous and it
Speaker:will stay that way now. Nfts.
Speaker:So money is plungible.
Speaker:The word pungeable means interchangeable.
Speaker:One dollars as good as any other dollar.
Speaker:One atom of gold is good as any other atom.
Speaker:Bitcoin is also mainly fungible.
Speaker:One Bitcoin is the same as any other Bitcoin.
Speaker:But NFT's are non fungible tokens.
Speaker:So for example, a property deed is not fungible.
Speaker:Your house is not interchangeable
Speaker:with someone else's house.
Speaker:Your car is unique as well.
Speaker:And so NFTs are digital assets that are unique.
Speaker:Currently the NFTs that we have are for art.
Speaker:This year was an open up project
Speaker:where I produced NFTs for music royalties.
Speaker:So when you buy the NFT, you get writes
Speaker:to the income stream from people listening to music
Speaker:that was featured by Billboard and Rolling Stone magazine.
Speaker:That's not the NFT, but mostly today's NFTs are art.
Speaker:I think it's kind of a fad, but I've
Speaker:been wrong about a lot of things before.
Speaker:But they are selling individual
Speaker:NFTs for 300, 400, $500,000.
Speaker:So it's definitely very popular right I know that Tom
Speaker:Brady is probably bringing out his own NFT line up.
Speaker:If I were an artist I would be selling enough
Speaker:teas because people have a lot of money to spare
Speaker:apparently buying them but I'm not an artist.
Speaker:Well, David I've enjoyed talking to you and I've learned
Speaker:quite a bit and I appreciate this very much.
Speaker:Where can we find you on the web so if you
Speaker:want to get some of the Bitcoin please check my website
Speaker:the bitcoinconsulting.com I have a newsletter you can follow if you
Speaker:can hire me to teach you exactly how to buy and
Speaker:hold Bitcoin if you run into trouble with your Bitcoin and
Speaker:need some help wallet recovery info and I will help you
Speaker:out and if you're looking for a managed investment fund in
Speaker:Bitcoin that's vellum capital very good. Very good.
Speaker:Thanks, David we've been chatting with
Speaker:David Vixler of the Bitcoin consultancy.
Speaker:David, thanks for Manning the foxhole with us
Speaker:today, Blair Martin it's been a pleasure.
