All right. Hey there.
This is Bob Constant and you're listening to Bitcoin for
Millennials. Together with my guests on this
podcast, I go on a journey to discover how our current
financial system works, why it's flawed, and why Bitcoin is the
most relevant technology that you should understand and adopt.
In this episode I'm joined by Zack and Art.
He runs education for Thea AY combinator backed startup
providing the world's simplest Bitcoin multi sick and self
custody service. He's also a student of economics
at the University of Victoria and prolific writer with his own
publication, The Bit Economist on Sub Stack.
Welcome, Zach. Thanks for having me.
Thanks for coming on. I I enjoy.
I enjoyed your writing and one of the goals with this podcast
is to just have lots of different bitcoiners on and here
about you know their learnings and and in your case your
writings and yeah man I'm super happy you you're here.
Like I I would love to talk about, like one of the articles
you wrote, which is about, you know, breaking down myths around
Bitcoin. But first I wanted to ask you
like which generation do you belong to?
Because I think you're quite a bit younger than me.
Yeah. So I am part of Gen.
Z1 of the older people in this generation.
So I think it spans from like 97 to to the 2000 tens or so.
OK, yeah, And do you find it hard to, like, help your
generation understand Bitcoin? I think there are.
Positive and negatives to it. So one of the things that makes
Bitcoin much more accessible to our, to my generation is the
fact that we've grown up in a very digitally native way.
So we we witnessed the advent of of most of the largest social
media companies as well as just basically the digitization of of
everything from our photos to writing, you know, to emails to
to movies to TV to music. Everything is now just within
reach on our smartphones. So from that perspective.
Bitcoin I think is relatively easy to understand, but even
still, I think there's a big barrier around education,
especially in Canada. I can speak from experience in
the in the public education system here that we don't really
learn at all about. We don't really get any
financial literacy, we don't learn about finance or
economics. And even if you get to the
university level, it's something you really only learn about if
you are choosing to study a degree related related to these
fields. So.
Yeah. It's a little it's a little it's
difficult but it's also like the there are, there are there's
yeah, we we we have a certain amount of knowledge already that
that does help. Yeah.
What I find interesting is that
like for my generation, I think what people and and this was one
of the things when it also really clicked for me, how
special Bitcoin is that, you know you can actually own
something which is digital but true its nature like how it's
engineered, it's actually almost, I say physical or
tangible, right. The fact that that digital thing
you own, you know, one bit one Bitcoin for example, is actually
in your possession. It's not stored anywhere or
whatever just because you have access to it with your private
key, it's verifiably yours. And because you can store it in
your head, that's when I call it tangible, right?
But I think that's where most people kind of, like, have a cut
off in understanding if that makes sense, right.
Because everything we know up until now, and I think also for
your generation, it's like, yeah, digital, like everything
can be copied. Everything can be shared.
It's like an infinite way of doing so, like, how do you look
at that? Like would you also say it's
tangible or what? What?
What's the word you use? Yeah, I would agree with you
there. It's kind of strikes this this
weird balance where it's both digital in nature but also has
tangible qualities and exists kind of in the physical world,
both through the way new bitcoins are created with
Bitcoin mining, but also through the way that we store our seed
phrases. So when you, you know, you open
a Bitcoin wallet and you get those 12 words and those
represent your Bitcoin and that's a physical representation
of your Bitcoin and and and those words are what give you
access to it. So it definitely has both these
tangible and digital qualities. And it kind of takes the best,
the best of both worlds. Almost.
Yeah. It's actually interesting when
you say, like you let's say you write down those words, right?
That's like the access key to your Bitcoin.
I kind of have like this cashier's check feeling, right?
Like because it's, it could be like a very, it's like a very
viable, viable code, right? You could have it like written
down and then you could check online or just digitally.
You can check if you actually, if that code actually gives
access to, you know, a Bitcoin. So I'm gonna start using that
actually. Like, I think that's great
because that's not with any other things, right.
That's not with digital photos. It's not with music.
Or like, you cannot verify that ownership.
Yeah, you can show it on your computer, but then you always
have to take your computer, right.
OK, let's. I'll think about that.
That's that's fun. Yeah.
So you wrote an article called Bitcoin Myths and breaking down
the Most Common misconceptions. I would love to go like through
it, but what made you like? What inspired you to to write
the article? Yeah, totally.
Well, I was mostly inspired to write that article because I
think Bitcoin is something that everyone has heard about at this
point, especially over the last couple years over the during the
pandemic and things like that, we kind of like it was almost
like a a leap forward in the digital nature of everything
that we're doing. You know people went online to
to. To do work through zoom and
things like that and then Bitcoin really broke onto the
scenes for for the for more like mainstream public.
And so given that that had happened everyone kind of knows
what Bitcoin is. But I think very few people have
actually taken the time to research it.
Like beyond kind of just what the narrative is around like
media, what they say about Bitcoin or what political
figures are saying about Bitcoin, I think it's really
important to. Research it on your own and and
come to your own conclusions. And so that was kind of one of
the reasons I wrote this article, because there's a lot
of narratives around Bitcoin that are simply not true and are
a result of the fact that people haven't done enough research to
understand how Bitcoin works. And so that's why I often say
that I think Bitcoin is one of the most misunderstood
technologies of our time. Yeah, I think so too.
I I I think I once tweeted something like if you're if
you're really progressive and care like about the environment
you should definitely research Bitcoin.
You know like it's just I find it so interesting that
especially that side there's no one who is like an outspoken
let's say environmentalist besides maybe Daniel Batten on
on on Twitter. You know who is talking about
this. And and and I fully agree with
with what you say like it's hard to understand Bitcoin but I
think there's so many yeah there's so many people with very
strong opinions but they're kind of loosely held in a sense that
I don't know if you ever encountered like a legitimate
Bitcoin counter arguments. We can talk about that later but
I find it very hard to actually find them.
Right. Like it's more feelings or you
know these these simple thoughts like how do you see that And I
think it's actually bad. Right.
Like it, it fuels skepticism and and and also adoption.
While you know you, me and and lots of other people know that
this is a a revolutionary thing in the sense.
Yeah, absolutely. I think we're kind of living in
this age where like opinions and beliefs have kind of become
almost as relevant as as like cold, hard facts.
And I I don't really know how that happened.
But yeah, I definitely noticed it as well.
And it's definitely a big problem because it it fosters
misinformation and false narratives about things that
actually can be really helpful to the world.
Like Bitcoin. Yeah.
All right. So the first one that you that
you talk about is Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme.
I love. I love that when people tell
tell that to me on on Twitter. How, how does how does Bitcoin
set itself apart from Ponzi schemes?
You you talk about like open source, nature, transparency,
the open, you know, the full accessibility.
Basically, yeah, how would you bust the Bitcoin is a Ponzi
myth. Yeah, totally.
So I think it's important to understand like what what a
Ponzi scheme is. So a Ponzi scheme is sort of is
an investment scheme where basically.
New money is taken from from new investors coming into the
investment scheme and it's funneled up to other investors
and some of them keep a little bit of money for themselves And
these sorts of schemes they rely a lot on secrecy to obfuscate
the fraud that they're committing.
So they're they're not open at all in nature and they often
make promises of things like high returns and little risk and
so when you when you take into these account.
Into these, these factors of of what a Ponzi scheme is and then
you look at what Bitcoin is, you can see that they are very
distinctly different. So we're we're a Ponzi scheme
sometimes, right? Like, because when people say
like Bitcoin is the future, it's going up forever, etcetera.
Like I you know, these could be the same words used by people in
a Ponzi scheme in a sense, right?
Yes, I hear what you're saying there, but I think I think we
get sometimes people get a little carried away as with any
investment. Bitcoin has the potential for
very high returns, but it's also accompanied by the possibility
of financial loss. I think that that is just a how
investing works. And as much as I'm very
confident in the future of Bitcoin, nobody knows the future
exactly, so you probably shouldn't trust anybody telling
you that. But also so for example, Ponzi
schemes also tend to benefit insiders, right?
So Bitcoin contradicts that notion very heavily.
Because when Bitcoin came onto the scene in 2009.
It was not initially distributed to insiders or anything like
that. Right from the get go it was
open to anyone. They anyone could mine Bitcoin
and obtain some coins for themselves.
Ultimately who got to do that or not was based on just who was
paying enough attention or who heard about it.
So it's a very fair and inclusive launch.
Whereas with with Ponzi schemes you would have money coming in
favoring insiders and then when those those insiders cash out of
that investment scheme that that tends to collapse.
Which again I think Bitcoin kind of contradicts that as well
because we've seen for almost 15 years now Bitcoins gone through
market cycles. It's gone through ups and downs,
but it continuously recovers and makes a new all time high and I
think that's sort of reflecting the the growing strength and
resilience of the underlying network.
And then finally, of course, Ponzi schemes rely on a lot of
secrecy. They they don't want you to know
what's exactly happening to the money behind the scenes.
They're just saying give me your money and I will invest it and
get you really high returns. With Bitcoin, it is, it is very
transparent. So in in two different ways.
One is that it's open source code, so anyone can verify the
Bitcoin code itself. Verify the code that you're
running when you run a node. And then as well the the Bitcoin
blockchain is is an immutable, transparent Ledger of of all the
Bitcoin transactions that have ever happened.
So the idea that it it is in no way like secretive, it's very,
very open. It's open to screw me in an
entire point. It's the entire point, right?
Yeah, yeah. But why do you think people say
that? Like I I I get it in replies.
I think. I think people focus more on
like the investment part, quote UN quote of it, right, that you
can actually buy it. And then when someone, well, I
say to someone like talk about the value going up or something
and then then they kind of throw this in, right?
Like, yeah, you you just want the next sucker to buy it or
something like, but it's also kind of where that stops, right.
Like the definitions that you just gave, I've never seen a
company, you know this this argument being accompanied with,
right? Yeah.
So perhaps it's kind of an education thing in the sense on
both sides of the subjects that we're talking about.
I think there's something to be said about like possibly the way
that a lot of people promote Bitcoin, Like it invokes a lot
of passion in individuals, and that can result in people just
being very forward about it. And I think that that
forwardness can also kind of come off as like.
This is a little this seems fake.
This seems too good to be true or or whatever, right?
And the truth is, it's not too good to be true.
It actually is. It's true and it's that good,
which is, which is totally crazy.
But, but that's kind of how you realize when you've looked into
it more. Yeah, I agree.
I think it also is kind of like I, I I think this episode is
gonna be really good, but that we talked about this.
And then what I think is interesting is that I now think
it should invoke something in you when you hear someone so
passionately talk about anything in general, right?
If someone says like, OK, I don't know.
Sometimes I take myself in this as an example, like, I, I don't
know, I spent 10 less, 10 years on and off learning about this.
Right. Is it 10,000 hours?
I don't know. Probably more, you know.
And when I encounter people who I know have been spending more
time but also have, for example, a sort of career in finance or
something, you know, and they say like, well, I mentioned Greg
Foss a lot, right? He says, I've been 35 years in
the risk chair. I've seen all these things.
Bitcoin is the best asset that I've ever come across, right?
Like that sparks something in me where I think like, OK, I want
to understand why this guy, you know with this track record says
something like this. You know, instead of thinking,
well he must be talking shit or supporting a policy in a sense,
yeah, well the next myth is Bitcoin is too volatile to
function as money, right? And you argue that the
volatility is is a natural aspect of price discovery,
right? People are are investigating
what could this be worth and you also mentioned the term
monetization. I read that before.
Maybe you can explain that like what that actually means.
I think as it as it is getting valued, I would say something
something like that that's would be my explainer right now.
Yeah. So, So what is this?
And and you know what will lead to a reduction in volatility or
will it stay like this? Totally.
So yeah, I I think I'd love to start by just saying like.
The idea that Bitcoin is volatile, I can understand that
people would be turned off by that as an investment.
Most people don't want to see the fluctuation of their wealth
to sweat it to quite a large degree, but I think it's also
important to recognize that volatility is not.
Intrinsic characteristic of Bitcoin as a technology but
rather a reflection of its young and evolving nature.
The fact that it is a truly free market and also the fact that
there's a lot of speculation of the Bitcoin space because it's
such a new technology. So often these these price
corrections where we see massive run UPS in price and and then
massive crashes is also driven by people over leveraging and
and leveraging long or leveraging short on either
direction which causes much more violent.
Price fluctuations in Bitcoin, but it's not necessarily a part
of what Bitcoin is. And if we look at one of the
reasons I think people are also really turned off by this is
because is the idea that that the volatility is kind of part
of the the price discoveries phase of Bitcoin.
So Bitcoin is undergoing monetization as we speak.
The market is trying to figure out how to properly price
Bitcoin. What is it?
What is its equilibrium value? And and I can understand why
people find that kind of off putting because no one alive
today has actually ever witnessed the real time
monetization of a good. So really this is like the last
time this would have happened was probably with with gold and
obviously no one alive today witnessed gold become money.
Whereas we are actually witnessing in real time Bitcoin
becoming a dominant medium of exchange in the world, which I
think it is is really cool and that's also part of why it is so
volatile. And then also I think it's also
important to recognize that while Bitcoin is volatile, it
experiences strong price fluctuations.
It is consistently recovered and reached new all time high.
So I think it's more accurately characterized as being like
upward volatility. So even though it is changing in
price a lot, it continues to go up in value and then
additionally. Volatility in Bitcoin has been
decreasing over time. So if you you can look at the
Bitcoin volatility index and it basically measures the the the
standard deviation of of of moves in the in the price of
Bitcoin over time. And you can see over it's 14
year existence it has significantly decreased in
volatility. And I think this is a reflection
of the fact that the market is maturing.
There is growing liquidity in Bitcoin.
There's a growing investor base. And these things are
contributing to the maturation of Bitcoin as an asset and that
decreasing involve the decreasing volatility.
So I think as as time goes forward, as more investors come
to the Bitcoin network, as liquidity grows, we're probably
going to see volatility decrease even further.
Yeah, yeah, I very, very good points.
I think the point about this is something none of us has ever
witnessed before. I think is a is a very good
point. I have not thought about that
before. I I actually it's not not along
the same lines. But what I think is that people
don't know, like at what timeline this should judge this,
right? And especially currently,
everything is on demand. Everything happens when you want
it. You know, you have instant
gratification and there's no real patience currently in the
world, right? Like most people don't have any
patience. And when you mentioned this is
something that most people haven't seen before.
But combine that with no patience, right.
That's why I think this argument also comes up a lot, right?
Because as an answer to when someone says, like, Bitcoin is
too volatile, then I also think, yeah, but what do you, what is
the other side like? Like, what do you expect from
that? Like what is the other side that
does something just get invented and then instant this is what it
were. This is what it's worth, right?
Like I I don't think it happens like like that.
How does it happen? Yeah.
We don't know right. That's why it goes up and down
and maybe, yeah, it it takes, we don't know how long it's gonna
take. So yeah, that's kind of how I
sometimes view it. Like what?
What do you think about that? Like that, that short time
frame, basically, that a lot of people have.
Absolutely. I think, I mean Safedine touches
on this a lot and just the idea that basically people have very
high time preferences right now. They want instant gratification.
We, we, we there's rampant consumerism president and
cultures around the world. And yeah, to your point, like
something like this something does not just become money
overnight. Something doesn't even become an
asset overnight. It takes time.
It takes especially with an emerging digital network it's
going to take time for people that kind of place their trust
in it. I so I I remember reading one
time that I think that like it's around 20 years after a digital
network launches that people begin to think of it as being
there forever. So we passed that point a little
while ago with the Internet and most people believe that the
Internet is is always going to be here.
I think that's a pretty reasonable assumption and we're
kind of nearing that point now with Bitcoin.
So as long as Bitcoin continues to function as intended, as it
has for the last almost 15 years, I think people will place
more confidence and bestow more trust in the protocol, in the
network. And yeah, like that'll that'll
that'll help drastically, yeah. I think that coincides with the
tweet I saw yesterday because yeah, that that 20 years, right
Then there's grown-ups adults. Who have not lived in a world
without Bitcoin, right. So it's always been there and
well they probably won't have like you know the capital to to
buy it or whatever. Like they just know that it's it
has has been there all their lives, right?
And then from there on, I also think that that adoption would
be. Not easier in a sense, but more
people would probably be educated on it.
Hopefully more people, the more people get educated on Bitcoin
that are now then are now educated in school on economics
in general, right? I hope so.
That we don't learn a lot about. Yeah, those, those are, those
are very good points. Yeah.
Well, then then we don't really have to wait that long, right?
Like in in in five years we'll have really like the first
adults who who've never lived in the world without Bitcoin.
So that's exciting. Totally.
Third Point about Bitcoin having no intrinsic value.
Yeah, people often say this, this is just the argument is it
has no intrinsic value. It comes from the error or
nothing. I I, I think this is one of the
weakest myths actually. How do you counter this when
someone says this? And yeah, like, particularly
when people compare to gold or real estate, diamonds, whatever,
yeah. So just to clarify, intrinsic
value is basically the idea that an asset has some sort of
inherent worth, usually associated with some sort of
tangible qualities that it possesses.
So take, for example, gold is a great example.
It has uses beyond its monetary uses.
So it's used in jewelry. It's used in industry and it's
also physical. So people are, you know, gold
has intrinsic value. And I think this, this argument
that Bitcoin does not have intrinsic value comes a lot from
like gold bugs and things like that, who feel that for
something to have intrinsic value, it needs to have tangible
qualities, it needs to have a tangible backing and so because
Bitcoin. Is is that it or is it?
Sometimes I understood it as, you know, gold gets formed
underground by lots of pressure and whatever you don't like.
Stuff happens, energy is expended, etcetera.
I know this is short leap to Bitcoin mining, but you know, I
I I kind of understand it as that, right?
Like something happened for gold to exist, something happened for
diamonds to exist, someone built a house that now someone can
live in. Is that the intrinsic value or
that that also plays into it? For sure, yeah.
And I mean, and you can kind of say the same thing about Bitcoin
mining in a way, but I won't even go there yet.
Yeah. And I think also it's it's
important to to kind of think, realize that that intrinsic
value comes in, in many forms. And that is because really value
is, is subjective, right. So I think in the article I
quoted Mises and he says value is not intrinsic.
It's not within things. It is within ourselves.
It's in the way in which man reacts to the conditions of his
environment. And that just kind of underpins
the idea that value is subjective.
People value things differently based on their own preferences,
needs and life experiences. So for someone to say that
Bitcoin doesn't have intrinsic value is sort of to like
heighten their own preferences over someone else's.
And when you think about it, while Bitcoin is not physical,
it's it derives value and an intrinsic value in its own way,
in its own way. And the ways that it does that
is through it's it's the way it was a technological innovation,
through its scarcity of having only 21 million coins, as well
as through its network effects and the like, the real world
utility that it possesses. So the ability for Bitcoin to be
sent anywhere in the world at very low cost almost instantly
is that's a very valuable service.
I mean we have entire industries built around just doing that,
but Bitcoin literally just obsoletes those things.
And then you when you consider also like the the, the growing
network and the network effect that Bitcoin has where the more
people using Bitcoin, the more valuable it becomes, the more
merchants accepting Bitcoin, the more easy it is to use your
Bitcoin to spend on goods and services.
And yeah, so those those things combined kind of solidify the
idea that Bitcoin does indeed have value.
It has, it has real world utility kind of challenging that
that conception that it has no solid backing or intrinsic
value. Again here, I think this is such
a simplification of this entire argument, This entire, well,
myth is is like a oversimplification of what
Bitcoin actually is, right? Because as you mentioned, you
can send Bitcoin anywhere in the world.
It's decentralized. It solves a crazy old problem
and the Byzantine general problem and.
Actually, just how the technology is configured does
already imply intrinsic value in a sense, right.
Because we can do things that we weren't able to do before, which
kind of sounds like intrinsic value in a sense.
Like it has value. It's not a random thing, right?
It's not a Yeah. It's not a random.
It's not a random thing. Yeah.
Interesting. Again, like I I that's again,
like, I think this is a good episode, right?
Like I always kind of chuckle when I see.
Oversimplification of Bitcoin and then used as an argument in
a sense that just really signals that you did not do the work,
you know, like you do you, you do not understand what this,
what this actually is. Yeah.
And I think another really good point, too is like, for the
people who say Bitcoin has no value, you got to ask yourself,
you know, what about the 100 million people who are using
Bitcoin? Right.
Like, do those. What?
What is it that those people are valuing?
What do they see in Bitcoin? Because clearly, maybe you don't
value Bitcoin, but others are. And there are an increasing
number of people who are valuing Bitcoin from individuals to
institutions to even nation states.
Right. So you kind of got to ask
yourself, like, what do they see in Bitcoin?
And when you ask yourself that, and then you do the research,
you realize, like, wait a minute, this is a, this is a
breakthrough technology. This has value.
There's something here. Exactly.
Well, that goes back to. What I just said, right?
Like it should and what you just say now, right?
Like it should spark something in you, right?
Like, it's. I've always been super intrigued
in like technology and like startups, people building new
businesses. And what I always thought was
like judging. Like seeing an idea or concept
and saying, oh this sucks or this could never work or this is
so stupid, you know, like that it's simple and lazy to do that
because. If someone is working on
something or 100 million people are adopting something and, you
know, sharing information about it and trying to educate other
people, there is something there because they are spending their
their energy, their time, maybe their money on actually, you
know, working on that idea or contributing to that idea,
right. So I always thought, well, if I
think something is stupid, but there's three people on the team
working on an idea. They see something that I don't
see. Maybe I'm right, but they are
still working on it, right? So I I I want to understand what
they see and then I can actually have an opinion, right.
Then I have my own idea and then I hear how they see it and and
then I can have actually a a better opinion on, you know,
whatever whatever the subject is here.
But yeah, I, I, I think it's the same here, right?
Like when when people are so are simplifying all these arguments.
I don't think it's bad faith. I think it's also sometimes
maybe a bit daunting, right? Like Bitcoin is just hard to
understand. There's a lot of dimensions that
it touches, right? And one of those things is, you
know, what you think you know about money and economics and
finance and you know, so it's also, I think, and not only
daunting, but it also challenges your narrative and that's that
could be scary also. Yeah.
OK, well. The next one is Bitcoin is bad
for the environment. I think this is the biggest it
is probably this is probably the biggest and and I think between
when you wrote your article and now a lot has changed.
There have been KPMG reports on the ESG aspect of Bitcoin.
I I mentioned Daniel Batten before on Twitter has like a big
fund investing in. I think it's.
Methane flaring and lowering emissions from landfills using
Bitcoin mining and he has amazing tweets and stats on
this. So a lot has changed since you
since you wrote about it. What we see is that Bitcoin is
increasingly powered by sustainable energy or making use
of other otherwise, you know, wasted resources.
Can you elaborate on this? Like what is this trend?
Where where is it at? Like, how is it growing and why
could this make Bitcoin one of the cleanest industries on the
planet? Yeah, totally.
So I think there is sort of this, there's an, there was,
there was this narrative growing.
I think it came a lot from like legacy media that Bitcoin is bad
for the environment where they try to paint Bitcoin mining as
sort of a black and white issue. Of course, nothing in nothing in
the world is that simple. So when you start doing some
more research, you realize that there's a much more nuanced
reality around Bitcoin. So just because Bitcoin uses a
lot of energy does not necessarily mean that it is bad
for the environment. Almost everything we do in our
lives uses energy. And so it it's not a, it's not a
valid criterion for deciding whether or not something is good
or bad for the environment. So when you look into it, I'll
just kind of knock off a couple facts to start here.
Go for it. Yeah.
So for starters, according to the the Cambridge Bitcoin
Electricity Consumption Index, Bitcoin consumes about .2% of
global energy production on an annual basis.
So it's a pretty, pretty small amount of energy in the grand
scheme of things. It's, it's.
On par tumble dryers. Exactly.
Yeah. So it's it's on par with tumble
dryers in the US alone. So just in the USA, it uses
about the same amount of as as tumble dryers, which is a very
minuscule actually. Yeah, well, clearly tumble
dryers use more energy than I realized.
But you know, a lot of places kind of they like to make
comparisons to countries, which is just not a good comparison at
all. It's not really fair.
Countries are made-up of of millions of millions and
sometimes billions of people. And also kind of this notion
that energy is bad, right like. I once heard someone say, look
outside and then everything you see is made by energy.
Everything from the trees to the bricks to the just everything
costs energy. And that's also the entire point
about money, right? It's to exchange energy with
energy with each other. Totally.
Yeah. Well, like, yeah, every
everything is, everything is is made from energy.
Everything is energy. Energy is the the key to human
flourishment, Right. I don't know if you've probably
seen that chart where it's like there's no such thing as an
energy poor country where like if you if you are developing as
a country, you are an energy rich country and that's there's
a there's a very tight correlation between development
and energy usage. Yeah, so, so, so Bitcoin uses a
a pretty small amount of energy in the grand scheme of things in
the world. It is also like you were saying
powered by a majority of sustainable energy already and
this this number is something I it has been increasing and
something I do expect to increase as time goes on.
And as you were saying Daniel Batten is a is a climate VC and
and Bitcoin advocate and he so one of his his recent research
found that 52.6% of all Bitcoin mining is being done with
sustainable energy. I think the Bitcoin mining
council also has a report that finds around 60% as well.
So I mean somewhere in that range of of 50 to 60% of all
Bitcoin mining is being done with sustainable energy, which
is actually higher than almost most industries in the world.
So even though Bitcoin is a very new technology and coming onto
the scene just now, it's already using more sustainable energy
than than most other industries. And then the even more stunning
part, and this is more. Again, shout out to Daniel
Batten for this one. He he did a report with Willy
Woo and they found that over the last three years the emissions
intensity of the Bitcoin network has fallen by over 50%.
And what's really stunning about this is that the emissions
intensity of Bitcoin mining is falling while the network is
growing and scaling. And there.
This was an argument before, so I can't think of any other
industries that can make a claim like that.
And the reason why this is happening is because Bitcoin
miners are increasingly adopting renewable energy.
They're they're adopting wasted energy and just sustainable
energy sources in general. Why are they doing that?
Because Bitcoin miner Bitcoin mining is a very cost
competitive industry. It necessitates access to to to
low cost energy and that often comes in the form of
intermittent renewables, stranded renewable energy as
well as wasted energy like things like flared gas from from
from oil and gas operations, but also methane leaking from
landfills and things like that. So Bitcoin miners are
increasingly utilizing sustainable energy sources to
power their operations. And I think this is really
magnificent because it's completely absent of any
regulatory requirement from anyone for them to do this.
They're adopting this because basically they have an incentive
to use renewable energy over fossil fuels, and that's because
fossil fuels are typically too expensive for for mining Bitcoin
in most cases. That's not always the case, but
it's kind of the reason why we're seeing such a large
portion of it being done using sustainable energy.
Yeah I think it's amazing. I I, I actually, I love this
aspect of Bitcoin and and and and what I meant by it was the
argument before that well if Bitcoin is going to grow it's
going to consume all the energy of France or something.
I don't know there was like this this thing before, but it's
actually really great to see that now that it's growing that.
It could actually be. It's actually like on track to
become the first carbon negative industry in the world.
And yeah, what I Love Actually about Bitcoin in general, like,
we are going to talk about this for the next 40 years, right?
So we are going to see this industry become carbon negative,
right? And yeah, I just cannot wait for
that moment. Like I also really wonder if
Satoshi thought about this before.
I don't, I don't know, like it's not really mentioned, you know,
like in a white paper, but but just that the incentive for
miners to find the cheapest energy kind of ish, but not
really, you know, but like this this kind of the 2nd order
effect of Bitcoin that yeah, I think it's just truly amazing.
And again, you know, if you listen to this and you think
you're a progressive person who loves the environment and the
planet, you should just. Really dive into this because
it's actually pretty crazy it's there's less emissions than the
banking system right and and all these other things that most
people will probably find way more important currently you
know if they're learning about Bitcoin and so no I think you I
think you did a great job in explaining this and and again if
people want to see numbers right they can look for what did you
mention the Cambridge. What's it called?
Point Yeah, Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity consumption index,
yeah. Yes and yeah and Google.
Well, find Daniel Bethel on Twitter.
Shout out Yeah and also the KPMG Bitcoin ESG report.
If you type that in into Google, then you will probably find that
All right next myth, Bitcoin is anonymous and only used for
illicit activities. You describe Bitcoin
transactions as pseudonymous rather than anonymous.
Can you explain why this makes Bitcoin less suitable?
Yeah, so. So basically there is that kind
of that misconception that Bitcoin is anonymous, so it
would be a good tool for for criminals or for just for
illicit activity in general. But Bitcoin transactions are not
anonymous, they are pseudonymous.
And what this means is basically like your address for for both
sending and receiving Bitcoin. It serves as a custom identifier
for you, but it does not have any of your personal information
attached to it. So you can kind of.
I think a good comparison is like an e-mail address, an
e-mail address that serves as a custom identifier for you, but
it doesn't necessarily attach your your personal details to
it. You know your e-mail address
couldbehelloworld@gmail.com, right?
So for that exactly. So that basically means that
it's not anonymous for starters, which means it's it's definitely
not a great tool for illicit activity.
And why is that? And it's also has to do with the
fact that the Bitcoin blockchain itself is very transparent.
So as we were saying before, the Bitcoin blockchain is basically
a permanent record of all the Bitcoin transactions that have
occurred and will occur. So you would kind of be like
leaving a a paper trail of the transactions you made if you
were conducting illicit activity.
And you know, while it's still hard to associate an address
with a specific individual, you know, there are additional
investigative techniques that can put into play that allow
people to kind of trace the flow of funds over time.
Even still, I I would like to emphasize, even though it's
undesirable for illicit activities, one of the things
that Bitcoin does still have, despite this transparency and
traceability is that censorship and seizure resistance.
So the Bitcoin network does not discriminate at all.
So if you were to send through a transaction in any way, it's not
going to stop that transaction, even if it's for an illicit use,
it doesn't know the difference between you sending money for an
illicit activity and you sending money home to your family in
another country, right? So in that sense you could still
use it in that way, but. You'd be leaving a a paper trail
and there are there are privacy tools that can be built on on
top of it. And I I do hope that privacy
becomes a little something that we address more on Bitcoin.
But in general that that transparency, that immutability
of the Bitcoin blockchain paired with this Sudan and Sudan
amenity of of of transactions definitely doesn't make it the
ideal tool for any kind of criminal activity.
And we see that already if you look at the data like out of all
cryptocurrency transactions, only .34% are estimated to be
used for list activity, whereas something like Fiat cash is
obviously a much preferred medium for conducting illicit
activity. And why is that?
Because cash is actually anonymous and you can't trace
the the flow of it, right. So it's it's, you know, in
person transactions, there's no attaching your identity to that
piece of paper that you've handed to somebody else.
And if you look at the data again, up to 5% of all cash
transactions in the US are used for illicit activity.
So that's a significantly higher proportion than than with all of
crypto, not just Bitcoin. Yeah.
Great. You got that percentage.
I was, I was Googling real quick to see if I could find it.
Yeah, no, I think that's great. And especially like you now have
firms as what's it called, Chain chain analysis.
For example, they work with public and private organizations
to do research on blockchain and tech.
Wallets tag transactions and monitor.
Just, yeah, known criminal, criminal wallets for example,
for people who are hackers, you know, with these attacks where
you know the BitLocker attacks where people have to buy Bitcoin
to unlock their computers and stuff like that.
So yeah, you can do it as you mentioned, but yeah, it's
probably not the smartest or the the best thing that that you
could use. Where do you actually think this
myth came from? Is that just Silk Road legacy?
Yeah, I'm actually, I'm not sure where it came from, but I just
hear it a lot. Yeah.
So a lot of these myths are kind of just like I base this off of
what I heard in both like legacy media as well as just word of
mouth and talking to people that were like didn't know a lot
about Bitcoin and that the concerns they have right off the
bat. I I honestly think it's kind of
like a false narrative that got spread around in the early days
of Bitcoin, probably associated with like the Silk Road, with
Silk Road and things like that. I mean, yeah, so not 100% sure
of the origin, but. Yeah, yeah, it's it's probably
that. I think that's just also one of
the things how Bitcoin got known, right?
Yeah, exactly. And to more, more broader
public. Yeah, All right.
Next one is Bitcoin will be hacked or shut down and you say
that. Due to Bitcoin's decentralized
nature and the security makes it resistant to hacking, what's
What are? How does this contribute to its
resilience, and are there any other things?
Yeah, so a lot of people, because Bitcoin is, as we were
kind of touching on, like it's a, it's a relatively new digital
network. So people aren't necessarily
sure about its permanence yet. And they think that it'll like
because it's digital, it might, it can get hacked.
And that's something that kind of stems from the fact that a
lot of digital products can be hacked as well as the idea that,
you know, like governments are are going to ban Bitcoin or
something like that. And really governments can only
ban themselves from from Bitcoin.
They can't actually ban Bitcoin itself.
And the reason for that is because, well, one Bitcoin is a
decentralized network. So there is, there are people,
what we call nodes, running the Bitcoin software in all corners
of the world and there are also people mining Bitcoin in all the
corners of the world. And these people running the
Bitcoin net software are are all keeping a separate version of
the Bitcoin Ledger right there on their computer.
And they're verifying it every 10 minutes as new blocks come
in. And the the beauty of this is
that like you could have a nation state ban Bitcoin and say
you know like you can't mine here, you can't run the Bitcoin
software if that would be extremely difficult to enforce
of course. But even if some were not
happen, like say somewhere in the US and you know Bitcoin just
went dark in the US, the network itself would continue to
function as intended pretty much perfectly.
Like obviously the hash rate would take a little bit of a hit
but because there are nodes everywhere else in the world the
the Bitcoin network continues to function.
So it would take like widespread blackout to be actually able to
affect the the network, but even in that case like you know, I've
seen people broadcasting Bitcoin.
There's two nodes, 2 nodes. There's even satellite.
Exactly. There's even satellite nodes,
right? Yeah, exactly.
So we have, we have Bitcoin in space on satellites.
We have Bitcoin that's being sent over radio.
We have Bitcoin on the Internet. Like, like the Internet is just
the most efficient way to use Bitcoin.
It's not necessarily attach the Internet or or reliant on the
Internet in any way. I mean you can actually like
create a wallet and mine Bitcoin using pen and paper if you
wanted to, which is totally crazy to think about.
And then the other thing too is, is the idea that Bitcoin can be
hacked and that to me is is technically infeasible.
Why is that? Because Bitcoin is 1
decentralized 2 uses some of the most advanced cryptography that
we know as well as just the immense amount of computational
power backing the network. So if people aren't familiar,
one of the one of the things people say is like a call the
51% attack and that would basically involve harnessing a
majority of the network's computing power to to to conduct
faulty transactions or get some more Bitcoin for yourself.
But what what you realize is that that at this point is
pretty much impossible given that how decentralized multi
billion dollar. Yeah.
And how much that that energy backing the network and is is
quite immense so. So people kind of realize like
and and it would have been easier right if if if Bitcoin
was going to be hacked it would have already happened.
Every day it becomes increasingly harder to hack and
and more secure and I think that that kind of is it's it's a
thing of beauty. Yeah.
Yeah, I I once saw a video by
Andreas Antonopoulos, I I think it's probably like over eight
years ago or something where he explains that even back at that
moment an attack as you mentioned it was already a multi
billion dollar endeavor and even when you would be able to do it.
So now it's. Increasingly more.
I wonder if there's actually like numbers out there, right,
if people could actually calculate like what it what it
would take. But even when you would have
like more control over the network, there's only 10 minutes
actually in in which you could make money, right?
Because it will be noticed very quickly and then you would be
locked out. That node from which you are
basically, you know, or the nodes from which you are
basically attacking the network, they would be excluded by all
the people that are not part of the of the attack, which is the
majority again, Right. So yeah, you would just be
ignored basically. And yeah, so, so they're like an
attack. Yeah.
What? What would even be an attack,
right. You cannot take it down.
You can attack it. Yeah.
You can have some fake transactions.
Yes, you will steal something. But actually, if the network
then forks, right, And you are excluded, then yeah, there's
nothing. There's no problem there.
Yeah, there's not even a problem.
Yeah. And and actually, while you're
talking, I I Googled like, what's the size of the
blockchain? It's only 15 gigabytes.
And actually, also, while we're talking, I was thinking, what is
just so amazing about Bitcoin? It's just code.
It's one since there's like the
15 gigabytes is text. It's literal text.
It's just text, right? It's just a chain of text.
And it's funny. Like, sometimes I have these
moments in Bitcoin where I think, like, wow, that's
actually pretty. Insane, right?
That is just text. And also I sometimes I heard, I
heard people say like bit Bitcoin is actually freedom of
speech. Like even even if you have
because text and creative expression or you know a thought
in your head which could be your private key, it's just free
speech, right. So how how could you even ban
that or shut that down? Like it's just, it's just not.
It's just totally, you can't. Yeah.
It's totally impossible. Yeah.
I'm not afraid to say the.
Yeah, no, it's totally impossible.
Yeah. And it would be.
It's actually like one of the the, the, the, the, the things
about the rules in Bitcoin, right?
It's like follow the rules instead of rulers.
How we follow rulers now, right? And everyone who wants to use
Bitcoin, they can say they can see the rules, they can see how
everyone else is playing by the rules, they can, they can see
anything. And the most important thing is
that when you want to play in Bitcoin, you have to play
according to the rules and you have to also show everything,
right. So you're it's forced
transparency on the base layer and then every everything that's
built on top. And I think for me that's one of
the things, you know, when we talk about hacking or shutting
down or you know, it's it's also better to play by the rules that
actually try to bend the rules or you know.
Try to misuse the rules or or or change them or whatever.
Like it's just it's just easier to play along.
Right. And and same for countries.
You know, as you mentioned, it's just the entire endeavor of
trying to kill Bitcoin is super futile.
Like makes no makes no sense. Yeah, exactly.
Like the the incentives of the network itself encourage you to
play by the rules. Instead of using that that
computational power that you got to try to to to mess with the
Bitcoin network. What you should do instead is
dedicate that to playing by the rules of the network and get
some coins for yourself. Right.
Like so that it has like this sort of like economic incentive
to to play by the rules and to actually not hack the network
because you would be more beneficial for you to play by
the rules and just mine some Bitcoin.
Yeah. And you know what?
Like I, I would say like who? Who would be able?
Able to to try to stage an attack right?
Like that's, well it's by now it's nation states think about
what what what would the PR value be in legitimizing Bitcoin
If someone would if there would be like a nation state attack
attempt on Bitcoin, like in my mind that legitimizes this as a
thing, right? Like as it's a legit.
Threat to a current system or whatever the argument is
actually for for attacking Bitcoin in that sense.
But for me, it would be like the ultra legitimization of Bitcoin
as a whole. Yeah, I don't know.
Well, let's see. Let's see if that would happen
any, any day. I don't.
I don't think it would ever
happen as well either. All right.
So last myth is Bitcoin is a bubble.
I think for me the one about the environment and the bubble are
the biggest ones that I hear. Yeah, you mentioned labeling
Bitcoin as a as a bubble. Yeah.
Again, it's like a over simplification of how it works
and and how it's growing in adoption.
How? How is it not a bubble, and how
does it set it apart from actual bubbles?
Yeah, well, so when the idea of a bubble is basically that an
asset, or in finance at least, would be the idea that the value
of the asset is inflated well beyond its intrinsic worth.
And so, you know, many people will will call Bitcoin a bubble
because it kind of, it's still very new.
They'll compare it to the Tulip mania at the end of the Dutch
golden age in 1634 where tulips became, you know, a very highly
valued commodity and then came crashing down a couple years
later. But I think that kind of so
labeling Bitcoin is a bubble sort of oversimplifies it.
It's the growing technology underneath it and like, the way
that it works. So, and I think also one thing
that that draws people to saying it's a bubble is because of
these big run UPS in price. So like you know going from
$20,000 to to almost $70,000 US in 2021, like to that that
amount of appreciation makes people kind of think oh this is
a bubble, right, But it's not. And why is that?
Because what we've seen throughout Bitcoins 14 year
existence is these big run UPS in price and then a price
correction as it goes back down. But what it keeps doing is it
every time it's it is even though it's crashing, it
consistently recovers and makes a new all time high in the next
cycle. And that kind of just highlights
like that, that the underlying network that is that is Bitcoin.
And it's not just it's not just like this, this artificially
inflated asset by any means. Or yeah, exactly.
It's it's it's a reflection of the fact that the network is
growing that there are more investors involved in it that
they're like yeah like the the asset itself is is maturing and
becoming more relevant in the in the on the global stage and that
and that's just going to continue to happen.
And I you know probably over the next few years probably honestly
when when we make the next all time high I think people will
kind of realize that Bitcoin is here to stay that that it's not
a bubble. It wasn't a bubble when it made
it to 70,000. It's not going to be a bubble
when it breaks through 100,000. And yeah, so I think it's kind
of just one of those things that's just going to take time.
But once you understand like you know how Bitcoin works, the
decentralization of it, it's inherent scarcity, it's growing
network effects. You know, it's it's it's a
revolutionary technology. It's it's not a bubble.
I mean if you want to talk about bubbles, we can, we can talk
about a lot of different financial assets in the world
right now. I mean I'm living in Canada and
I mean we're we have what I would argue is probably one of
the the largest housing bubbles the country has ever seen since
I was born. Housing prices have increased
over 400%, which is obviously completely detached from their
intrinsic. Value.
Are there 400% more people who know And OK, no, no, I mean, we
know our population is growing, but we're a pretty small country
in general. But like, the really, the
depressing thing is that our incomes aren't growing at that
speed, right. So.
So there's a, there's a divergent between the the
average income that a Canadian is earning and the and the cost
of buying a house. So it becomes increasingly more
difficult for for people to buy houses here in Canada,
especially if you're if you're part of Gen.
Z. And this is something that I
talked about quite a bit and it's like, so the question is
like why, why is this happening? And and in large part it's being
driven by like the the financialization of real estate
because our money is constantly losing value.
Investors and just people in general need a place to store
their wealth for the long term because they can't just hold
Canadian dollars or or U.S. dollars because those those are
basically you can kind of think of it like holding a bag with a
hole in it. They're constantly losing value
to inflation. And so holding a large amount of
wealth in in, in Fiat currency is a guaranteed way to lose
money. So what do people do, They
invest in assets, they invest in the S&P, they invest in houses,
especially housing, real estate has been must be like probably
the most popular way to store wealth over the long term.
And that's why we've kind of seen these these massive run UPS
in price, right. It's it's basically being driven
by this, this preference for long term wealth storage because
of the inflation that that is present over a long time and as
well as short periods like we've seen in this last couple of
years. Yeah, do you also feel that this
like bubble argument for Bitcoin is also again?
So weak, dismissive arguments in a sense, right.
It's for me when someone says that it's also really signals
like I don't really want to study this.
I just assume that it's nothing or it's bad or something and
then I'm just not going to study it.
But I'm still, you know, I'm still going to say it's a it's a
bubble, I think especially for this, you know, combined with
what you mentioned before like. The price discovery of a new
asset that that no one has actually ever you know
experienced and witnessed before like you you have to try and it
I, I, I also find it hard right to to go to some sort of more
like meta level you know like just higher than your own
position or or your community or whatever like it's it's it's
about something that is. Way, way, way bigger.
And that you just don't really understand, right.
Like the same as or when they say like the price goes up and
then maybe it's too much or then we call it the bubble.
But yeah, you you don't. Well, nowadays, OK, you hear
more people talk about like a housing bubble, right?
But if you look up like what? Is the total value of real
estate in the world. I think it's 300,000,000.
If I say correctly, it's like that's 400 trillion.
I think, if I'm sorry, did I say trillion?
You said million, but that's OK Oh.
No. Yeah.
It's like somewhere between 300 and 400 trillion number is just
unfathomable. Right.
Like how you you like. We don't understand.
We cannot Rep our brains. Our brains cannot, yeah, exactly
comprehend numbers that large. Which is a lot of time.
I love those kind of visualization photos of like,
you know, dollar bills stack, you know, 100 stacks as tall as
the Statue of Liberty around like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Or like 1,000,000 seconds. Is 11 days and a billion
seconds. Is 32 years and a trillion
seconds is 32,000 years. Wow.
You know, so it helps put in and and and yeah, to come back to my
point, like the dismissive part, it's just, it's just not that
simple. You know, like understanding
this is really hard or understanding trying to
understand finance and economics and it's just really hard, you
know. So again, I think because this
was also the last myth, you know that that that you talked about
in your article. I I feel in general that most of
them are yeah, kind of like easy dis dismissals of what Bitcoin
is, you know, I think you made great points about.
You know, showing that it's not as black and white, you know,
obviously I I fully agree. But I I think it's something and
especially nowadays that a lot of people think it's left or
right or yes or no or good or bad or whatever, like something
like this. And especially because this
touches, yeah, again, so many dimensions and also a core of
what most people think about, probably on a daily or weekly
basis, which is money. It's just a really hard subject,
you know, to understand. But yeah, I I think you did
great. What are some counter arguments
that you hear against your points?
Have you, have you heard them and how do you address them?
There are there are very few counter arguments that I've
encountered with that like kind of hold their veracity,
especially against all like the points that we kind of made
here. I think some of them are more
like things that I can just understand like we were talking
about like the volatility for example.
I can, I can absolutely understand investors not wanting
to have their wealth fluctuate that much.
But like like we said, that's not an intrinsic characteristic
of the technology, but rather just the young and evolving
nature of Bitcoin. I think that a lot of the time
sometimes we get a little ahead of ourselves on certain things
and we we base, we talk a lot of like.
In like kind of future speculation of of what Bitcoin
will do or what it can do which can get a little carried away a
little bit. I mean anything is possible
right? And Bitcoin is is demonstrating
remarkable resilience and and growth and and just emerging
with so many like real world use cases.
Yeah I I'm not sure there's like any specific arguments how about
you, have you encountered any sort of like really good
arguments against it you there's the whole like deflation thing I
guess. But I personally I I don't
believe that. I don't think like deflation is
necessarily as bad as people make it out to be.
Nay, I agree. I actually had.
A conversation today about Bitcoin with.
Two people who both own Bitcoin but they were both like, you
know, very, very small percentage of of their of their
wealth and they we were talking about that.
They were asking like, OK, how you know, these are the things
that kind of hold me back from. Allocating more.
Right. And I think we touched on a few
of these myths, actually. And I also try to kind of like,
you know disprove them. And we talked about it, but it's
just it's really. And then I said like, well,
yeah, I could go along with this.
But, you know like, so it's still.
I don't think it's it's well, I hope this podcast would will be
for a lot of people, but it's, it's, it's hard to dismiss these
things in like 1 conversation. Right.
So you can even hear this. As you explained it well in this
episode, I think, But you still have to kind of like do your own
research in a sense, right? Like, yeah, well, maybe some
people will think like, well, what Bob Morris access.
I'm just going to adopt that and then I'm going full into
Bitcoin. I don't think that's going to
happen, right. So you still have to do your own
work in a sense, and and yeah, challenge your own own beliefs.
But no, yeah. So back to that conversation.
Like, yeah, they had like these general, general counter
feelings. I almost want to say, right,
Yeah, in the future it could be this or that or XYZ.
And then I say, yeah, that's a lot of that stuff is kind of
like a straw man in a sense, right?
It could go bad because something, something, you know,
a lot of ifs and yeah, ifs, buts, whens, yeah.
And. So I kind of tried to steer like
those conversations more towards, you know, giving them
some resources or things to read or to watch.
Like, you know, this is what turned on, you know, some lights
and switches in my head that made me dive into this more.
Yeah, but. Yeah, I also have not really
seen any good counter arguments in general.
Also not on Twitter from, you know, all these critics or even
someone like Peter Schiff or something, you know, like that.
Yeah, it just sounds like an angry old man.
Like there's no real debate, you know, And it's just, it's just
hating in a sense. And then I think like, yeah,
yeah, I don't know, I, I pity that as kind of what I mentioned
before. Right.
Like if there's so many people. Very, very smart people,
actually. Every day I see, I see people
that, well, every day. I almost get my mind blown in a
sense of just how intelligent people are Bitcoin and how they
look at things and share, you know, And then, yeah, if someone
like Peter Schiff, well, for people listening, it's like a.
Apparently a famous gold investor or something.
I don't know. He's just always screaming like
all these Bitcoin idiots and blah, blah.
I don't know, Like, I kind of pity that, right?
Like, I don't really care what he does with gold, right?
Like, why would we scream about our gold socks or something?
I don't, I don't know enough about gold to even say that.
So yeah, why? You know, why would I even do
that? So yeah, I don't know.
Yeah. Again, like I pity that a bit.
He gets, he gets a lot of engagement from the Bitcoin
content. If you like, look at at the
tweets where he's like criticizing Bitcoin, they are
like, you know, twice as many views, likes and engagements
than anything else that he tweets.
So, like, he's probably doing that to just like broaden his
audience. But yeah, like I like you were
saying, like I I definitely encourage that actually makes me
pity it more. Yeah.
You know, but yeah, yeah, totally, Yeah and yeah.
No, go ahead. Yeah, I think the most important
thing like for anybody watching is, yeah, do your do your own
research and come to your own conclusions.
I mean this was sort of one of the reasons I I started writing
my newsletter in general was because I just saw so much so
much misinformation swirling around and I really wanted to
just like kind of cut cut through that and provide like
clear concise facts instead of just a lot of of wishy washy
misinformation and and competing narratives and stuff like that.
And it also is a way it's like I knew that a lot of my friends
and family were not going to be, you know tuning in to to Bitcoin
podcasts or reading Bitcoin books.
But they might actually, you know read read the newsletter
that I'm writing about this realize that I'm taking this
very seriously. And I hope that they can they
take it seriously as well because like and particularly
this article Bitcoin myths. Like I I wrote it in the hope
that people realize that this like we were saying, it's not a
not a black and white issue at all.
Bitcoin is not black and white. It is a very new innovative and
breakthrough technology that's going to change so many of the
ways that we interact with the world and our economic systems.
And it has so many benefits when you, whether you're thinking
about economic benefits, social benefits, environmental
benefits, it it touches all of these areas of our lives.
And that's because money is is one of the most important things
that we use right. Like it it forms the foundation
of all savings and trade and investment and that that they're
kind of like from there influences so many different
aspects of our lives that it's so subtle, it's so it's so deep
that people don't even realize it, right.
And we don't think about the money that we use.
But when you start to think about the money that we use and
the possibility for Bitcoin to serve as a new form of money
that we use and returning to the to sound money, to hard money,
money free from inflation and what that means for our current
systems and how we interact with the world and the problems we're
facing, it's it's immensely powerful and it's it's an
incredibly rewarding journey. So I I encourage anyone watching
to to really to do their own research and and look more into
Bitcoin because this is, it's not going anywhere.
Awesome man. I love that.
I have I have two final questions.
Are there any myths between when you wrote this article and now
that came up that you think are worth mentioning?
Not really. Are there are there any ones
that you kind of you were getting that that I didn't touch
on? I'm I'm curious honestly if I
missed any important ones. I wrote down the question but I
didn't think about it. Well, I, I, I, I do think
there's people who say like oh there's not enough, you know
there's only 21 million. I think we need to tell people
more people that you can, you know, it's it's divisible by 100
million exactly. And I don't know the exact
numbers, but I once read an article that that it could have
like some parity being like 1. One set, you know the the
smallest like 1100 million of a Bitcoin, if that's one cent it
would still it would work basically as a as a money.
I think that's like the main the, the, the maybe the one
extra thing. But I I think in general it's
the ones you you touched upon, right.
Yeah, even today. It's a it's a bubble.
Do you still think it could be higher or whatever like people
and the environment one I think for me again like those are the
main ones that that that I hear. Yeah.
So last question I ask everyone
the same question what's what's a core belief you will never let
go. I core believe I will never let
go, man. I wish I'd thought about this
before. Everyone has to think about this
I guess freedom of choice and expression.
I think that that is like at the core of a a peaceful and
civilized society. And I think that's also really
reinforced by Bitcoin and like like the idea of really strong
property rights and things like that.
Because that that that kind of builds the the basis for
functioning A functioning economy And and as someone who
kind of views the world through the world of economics and
through the like a very monetary lens.
I believe like the economic system we use just is so
important in our day-to-day lives that using the best system
possible is extremely important. Awesome.
Well, thanks for busting. Bitcoin myths here.
My pleasure. Can people find you online?
Where can I follow you totally and use your stuff?
Yeah, I'm on Twitter a lot at Zach Guinard or just Zach G
You'll find me on there tweeting quite a bit as well as my
newsletter through Sub Stack which is called the Bit
Conomist. Those are mainly the two, the
two places Twitter I use mostly for like short form stuff and
then anytime I want to write like a more lengthly article
touching on topics within Bitcoin and economics, it goes
right onto my sub stack. So either of those are are great
places to to keep in touch and and see the work that I'm doing.
Awesome. I will link to your.
Twitter X profile and and sub stack in in the show notes.
Thanks again for coming on and yeah, let's stay in touch and
and do this sometime again in the future.
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.
I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, it would be.
If you could rate, review and subscribe on the podcast
platform of your choice, it will help us educate more millennials
on the importance of Bitcoin. You can follow and connect with
me on Twitter. I'm Brom K That's at Bramk.
And if you are or know someone who has an interesting
perspective on Bitcoin that's worth sharing, hit me up.
I read and reply to every single message.
I appreciate your support and hope you'll be here for the next
episode. Thanks for listening.
Bye.