Episode 40

David Veksler on Crypto

Published on: 30th January, 2022

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.

Call-to-Action: After you have listened to this episode, add your $0.02 (two cents) to the conversation, by joining (for free) The Secular Foxhole Town Hall. Feel free to introduce yourself to the other members, give us constructive feedback, discuss the different episodes, or check out the virtual room, Speakers' Corner, and step up on the digital soapbox. Welcome to our new place in cyberspace!

Show notes with links to articles, blog posts, products and services:

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, AlituTranscript is provided by Veed.io.

Easy listen to The Secular Foxhole podcast in your podcast (podcatcher) app of choice, e.g., Apple PodcastsSpotifyGoogle PodcastsAmazon MusicGaanaListen Notes, or one of the new podcast apps, on Podcast Index, supporting the Podcasting 2.0 initiative, and Value for Value through Satoshis Stream (Bitcoin payments). You could also listen to our podcast on our own standalone app, by download it for free on Apple App Store and Google Play

Rate and review The Secular Foxhole podcast on Podchaser. Your support will give us fuel for our blogging and podcasting! Thanks for reading the show notes! Continue the conversation by going to our digital town hall on Haaartland.



This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy
Transcript
Speaker:

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.

Next Episode All Episodes Previous Episode
Show artwork for The Secular Foxhole

About the Podcast

The Secular Foxhole
Separation of Religion and State
As a freethinker, are you looking through binoculars out at the world in the safety of a foxhole? Get fuel for your soul and intellectual ammunition by listening to The Secular Foxhole podcast, in order to fight for the separation of religion and state.

Blair chose this name (The Secular Foxhole) to dispute the myth that there are no atheists in foxholes, but also as a place to share ideas and defend Free Speech. The co-hosts both advocate the separation of Church and State, but also Economics and State. In short, Liberalism, Individualism, and Capitalism.
Support This Show

About your hosts

Blair Schofield

Profile picture for Blair Schofield
I'm a 'lapsed' blogger who turned his blog into a podcast. Now the task is to keep both up to date! My co-host Martin Lindeskog and I have already celebrated our one year anniversary, with the podcast.

Martin Lindeskog

Profile picture for Martin Lindeskog
Creator, ✍🏻 Tea Book Sketches. Indie Biz Philosopher ⚛️ & New Media 📲 Advisor, TeaParty.Media. Blogger since 2002 and podcaster🎙since 2006. First podcast: EGO NetCast. Latest podcast: High Five for Hemp. Support 💲My Work and 🗽 Freedom of Expression: https://bio.link/lyceum