Episode 36 - Tales from the Crypt-o

welcome to this episode of the wolf and

the shepherd today we're going to talk a

little bit about cryptocurrency

tales from the crypto so

let's kind of take a not too deep

dive in we don't take too deep of a dive

we want to try to avoid too many

rabbit holes here but for those folks

out there that don't

really know quite what cryptocurrency is

all about

or maybe they do and maybe they have

some kind of a

beginning understanding of crypto let's

kind of dive in

and figure out exactly what what is all

this cryptocurrency stuff all about

this is one of those topics i thought we

might actually address

in an earlier podcast but with bitcoin

being in the news more recently because

of the price

right and its valuation uh been pretty

high

it has yeah that you know i figured it

was time for us to

actually um you know get grips with the

top yeah we have put it off for a while

yeah

and and it's probably time we stopped

putting things off like

we put everything off yeah so uh now

yeah we'll go ahead and check this one

off the box

of things we've been putting off for a

long time and finally getting around to

and unfortunately this is one of those

topics which

as much as you like to keep it basic

it's almost impossible to explain

cryptocurrencies

and bitcoin without do

without taking a little bit deeper

otherwise you don't deeper than bill von

diggs right yeah

so we're gonna we're gonna dig a little

bit deeper than bill von

inches okay now fair enough i mean yeah

you got to do that

for those of you uh confounded by that

comment bill barr is one of our good

friends who owns

one of the largest uh digging companies

in texas

and uh we interviewed him a few weeks

back

uh and were really excited to see how

close to the center of the earth he had

got and it turns out that his average

hole is between about 18 and 24 inches

so

we had to change our approach we had to

change our approach not that close

it was a fun interview but we had to

scrap half the questions we were going

to ask about

getting to the core of the earth and if

there were dinosaurs living underground

yeah and by the way once again that's

why we don't do too much research

because the one time we actually did all

the research we had to throw it all away

yeah

so but what are you gonna do yeah but

anyway like i was saying this is one of

those topics where

you know we do have to kind of scratch a

little bit below the surface

so that it answers the average person's

questions about bitcoin and unlike a lot

of topics

people will have uh quite a few more

questions about cryptocurrency and

bitcoin

i think there's more questions out there

than there are answers to yes and that's

it i mean i

although i found answers to a lot of the

stuff

i didn't know it's not easily digestible

but and then

it's like you get you make a statement

and then you have to give another four

statements to support that statement

otherwise it doesn't make any sense so

no it makes total sense makes total

sense so so we're

we're going to give everybody that kind

of

overlying ability to completely

understand cryptocurrency

by the time this podcast is done well i

won't go that far

oh okay so set my sights too high

once again sorry so what we'll be mainly

referring to

throughout this podcast is really

bitcoin obviously there are other

cryptocurrencies

bitcoin being the big daddy

cryptocurrencies yeah

and and the basic understanding of uh

cryptocurrencies for

anybody who's looked into it even

slightly is that

you know it's a digital method of

currency which

for the most part isn't controlled by

any central government or authority

okay and you know they're reliant upon

something called blockchain technology

and that's a kind of digital distributed

ledger

of all the transactions that take place

and

that ledger being some kind of a

spreadsheet floating out there in

cyberspace that's got everything written

down

yeah but it's very encrypted and you

know

it's not like somebody can look onto

your computer and

kind of you know find out everything

you've been right

it's not like giving somebody your

username and password to your

your chase bank account and saying hey

here's all my transactions

now actually the ledger for something

like bitcoin is actually public if they

have your bitcoin

address which is like a wallet address

which you can

i guess somehow equate to maybe your

login to say your chase account

online it will give all your transaction

details

and to the other addresses but those

addresses in themselves

don't tell you who those p who that

person or company was so if you spend

thirty dollars in bitcoin they can see

it went between one address and another

address but they can't tell who those

addresses be

right so so what you're telling me is

you can you can go on my

public wallet address and see that i

spent thirty dollars in

bitcoin but you can't tell that i spent

thirty dollars at the liquor store you

just know i spent thirty dollars right

sure gotcha yeah

so you know this this decentralized kind

of ledger

as long as nobody controls more than 50

of that computing power on the network

which

you know basically controls that

blockchain that's what we consider

decentralized if somebody

um actually controls the majority of the

network then it's called

centralized just simply because they

have control

right you know an influence on you know

various factors such as the value of

that coin they can manipulate the value

of that coin a lot easier

majority rules yeah yeah so

you know the the most digital currencies

you know they're secured by something

called cryptography which a lot of

people have heard of

and that's basically the in ciphering

and deciphering of code so

you know it's uh you know securing

the information to a point where no

normal person

can decode it and it takes just very

very just abnormal people

yeah yeah it takes a very complex you

know

algorithm to actually decrypt that set

of information so

so not just young you know

not straight kiddies no not not

teenagers

that are male that are wearing mascara

it it so yeah it's okay yeah that makes

sense

they're too busy playing fortnight now

anyway yeah yeah

so um you know the supply of you know

coins and cryptocurrency you know

bitcoin included

you know is uh basically controlled by a

process called mining which most people

have heard of mining

right i think if if you ask the average

person how do you get bitcoin a lot of

people would respond by mining but they

don't understand the process itself

and really mining is just a computer or

a network

of computers working together to solve a

whole bunch of mathematical equations

and the more powerful the computing

power the more of the

the quicker and larger quantity of those

equations

um they can solve and that actually

mines you bitcoin or rather bits of

bitcoin because a bitcoin is broken down

into a million parts and they're called

satoshi's and that's the same with other

cryptocurrencies

so this is completely different than a

dwarf with a pickaxe

um in some ways

yes but if you think of a lot of how

many dwarfs you get

super small dwarfs you could fit into a

computer and how much mining those

dwarfs could do

in a certain period of time it is

actually quite

similar so if you've got a computer

which has a lot dwarfs which mine

with that pickaxe a lot faster than they

can get a lot more gold

than you know yeah so i mean it's it's

actually a pretty good analogy if you

want to

so i need to get on amazon and try to

find me one of these computers that have

little

miniature doors with pickaxes then i can

get more bitcoin

um yeah yeah yeah yeah maybe

one might be google that one afterwards

right um

so basically you know these people who

are mining they're competing against

each other

right oh it's a competition yeah it is

so they collect

you know cryptocurrencies reward are

there participation trophies uh you know

actually there is because even though

you can actually mine even with the

slowest piece of crap computer

even if you spend 200 on a computer like

an entry-level computer now

say you'd pick up at walmart or on

amazon

is actually powerful enough to get you

you know

maybe about ten dollars a bitcoin a

month a smidgen a smidgen

if you leave it running like 24 7 in the

background but i mean it will

it will get you bitcoin and i mean you

know i mean as long as you're not hoping

to retire on it

it will get you enough to actually maybe

be able to invest that bitcoin in the

various

you know bitcoin investment type right

but by definition that is a

participation

trophy everybody gets a little bit of

everything

everybody gets some satoshi yeah gotcha

so um

you know some some cryptocurrencies um

you know especially some of the newer

altcoins which is anything which isn't a

bitcoin basis

altcoin altcoin anything

yeah yeah it doesn't mean it listens to

like good charlotte or green day

oh yeah oh okay yeah see you got me all

excited there yeah

all right so um so some of the

cryptocurrencies are actually

pre-mined and so they're kind of given

away when there's a public launch

free mind yeah is that is that kind of

like whenever you're getting on an

airplane

and then they say uh we're gonna call uh

certain people to pre-board

how do you pre-board an airplane you're

still boarding the airplane it's not

like you just magically appear on the

airplane and you say oh i

pre-boarded so it is pretty

pre-mined the same as pre-boarding no

okay no it to go back to your dwarf

scenario it's the case of like you

bought a bunch of dwarfs and they've

already done some mining for the gold

before you even purchase them so they

come along with some free crypto

that sounds like a great business yeah

it is again we've go to google

afterwards to see if that's yeah

possible but um you know you and i both

use

uh coinbase and we've been you know

fortunate enough to be part of about

between i don't know maybe six and eight

altcoin launches where

that's true where they've actually given

us you know a certain value of crypto in

these coins

and those were pre-mined and they just

gave us those points and we made i don't

know maybe about 200

each for free yeah just by watching a

few words

now hang on it wasn't free i had to

watch a video and i had to answer

questions

that's not free those were

very long videos they were almost a

minute long

and they were very difficult multiple

choice

questions you could get wrong as many

times as you wanted that

yeah in if i would have been smart

i could have just probably guessed at

the question but i actually watched the

video

and still out of abcd i would guess a

get it wrong b get it wrong and then d

get it right

so it it wasn't quite free yeah

and so the first thing you know i did i

know you kept hold of some of your

alt coins as such the first thing i did

was sell them and buy more bitcoin with

them

ah you know well you know that that's

the british thing to do

yeah now there has been obviously you

know some people

kind of i guess ripping people off in

this

pre-mining you don't say not in the

computer world

in the financial world there's people

taking advantage of people unfortunately

so

and what they've done is you know

they've boosted the oh yeah this coin is

you know going to be this price it's

going to be

used for this purpose and it you know

boosts the price up and then they just

cash out you know they give away all

these coins and people sell them

so so what you're telling me is there

are people out there trying to lead

people astray to make money

say it isn't so this is nothing that has

ever happened this is

this is brand new information this is

just a theory yeah

yeah so um well i mean going back to

what

you know the public generally wants to

know about

say bitcoin you know the question

which most people want to know is how

does it have any value

yes you know we kind of roughly

explained how you get in the first place

now you can just purchase it with money

i mean there are

various exchanges and apps such as you

know bread and coinbase

and brave and a number of others where

you can't go ahead and just literally

pay

regular money through a credit card or

whatever and purchase

you know cryptocurrencies you know and

mining is the other one which most

people know about and there are

websites which again both you and i have

used before

where you know they'll actually pay you

in bitcoin for filling out specific

tasks

um such as you know answering surveys so

i mean

you know those are the three main ways

you know to kind of get

bitcoin so i think that answers most

people's kind of

you know how do they get some skin in

the game of actually obtaining it but

yeah

they actually they're paying money for

it it's kind of like

my kids for instance and it burns me up

one side and down the other when my kids

come in and they say

you know can can i have five or ten

dollars in

v bucks for roblox right or for fortnite

or whatever and i'm like

what are you gonna do with this say why

why should we spend money well

i want this skin or i want this gun

or i i want whatever and i'm thinking

why am i using

actual currency and putting it into the

computer for you to have this

virtual thing yeah that

you use on a video game and it's kind of

the same thing i mean

kind of sorta not not quite the same

thing but it's very similar well i mean

they have a value i mean if you gave

you know because you can go to walmart

you can go to gamestop and you can

actually buy

these cards right you know a bit like

gift cards with these

oh my kids are asking for them for

christmas they want these on a card

yeah they want roblox gift cards they

want minecraft gift cards

yeah why are you spending your money on

this game now

uh full disclosure i may or may not have

spent some money on rocket league

so i i i kind of get it

maybe but i wanted a cool goal explosion

you know i

i know that's something you don't know

that much about scoring goals in rocket

league

but but maybe i did spend a little bit

of money on there when i score a goal in

rocket league then to make it look cool

yeah well the um actually that kind of

thing micro transactions on you know

whether it be mobile phones or on you

know gaming consoles

has come under a lot of heavy criticism

sure uh certainly by the government

by saying that you know it lures kids

into spending money

unwittingly and unknowingly in some

circumstances because it's normally

their parents card on the account

and you know they end up buying 12 000

points of whatever and it

actually comes to like 60 dollars for

them to buy a skin for somebody in

fortnight or something

right now obviously that might be way

off the mark in terms of how much it

costs but you understand that

type of concept with it so you know i

think i think

that that kind of points out when you

tell somebody it's

uh oh you can buy 9 000 tzaps

or you can spend 60 dollars people

generally don't understand

what 9 000 teas apps and i made that

word out by the way it doesn't exist as

far as i know

um they generally don't know what that

means as opposed to spending

sixty dollars people know what spending

sixty dollars means and this is how they

lure these kids in by selling them a

currency

which has no effectual meaning that

they'll

they'll for the most part will won't

look up now obviously if they're in the

you know xbox store or you know

playstation store they can look up and

see how much it costs to buy this but

for the most part

kids are impulse buyers they'll click on

the buy this

and it'll come out the parents you know

account oh yeah well

it's like my kids that you know my my

youngest

he wanted certain things on roadblocks

and they say it's

you know x amount of roblox dollars or

whatever those are right and then he

says well i i need

this amount of roblox dollars so

to get that gift card costs this amount

of

american currency so you know dad can i

have

15 in uh

real money so i can have the v bucks i

honestly i think it's called v

bucks that he always wants right and so

then

i buy this for him to keep him happy and

keep him

you know leaving me alone so he plays

his video games

even though you know already bought the

console

got the tv everything else and now i'm

still pumping money into this thing just

to keep them entertaining yeah

and i think that's where

like i said people begin to understand

that this type of cryptocurrency even

though that's a very basic form of it

because it's a

an immediate exchange of money for

something to purchase something because

then like i said kids who are mostly

impulse buyers will actually buy it

without understanding

perhaps the you know significance of how

much money they're spending

right and but you know for any currency

to really have a value it's

mostly going to fulfill three criteria

and cryptocurrencies are no different

um okay they need what are those three

criteria well enough people have to have

it in the first place you can't just

have

one person having it right makes sense

you know um

merchants and it doesn't have to be

everybody it just

even if it's a limited number of

merchants and then again going back to

computer games it might just be one

merchant

you know one particular game which is

but they must accept it as a form of

payment

okay um and society as a whole if you

want that currency to continue

uh it must you know they want it to

retain its value

then you know it's always got to have

some exchangeable value and like

to put that into basic things like um

you know if you go back in history

and you traded a sheep for a pair of

long boots

you know the value of what you traded

had to mean something to the other

person because one person wanted a sheet

the other person wanted some long boots

so sheep in herself was a currency and

if you had enough pairs of boots that in

itself is okay

because you can exchange now obviously

as you know the old school barter system

yeah

now obviously as you know coins and

notes and actual currencies came into

play then they overtook say

sheep being a form of currency or shiny

pebbles being a form of currency right

but even in the digital world you know

those things that

something has to have value to somebody

else for them to want it now in the case

of something like a cryptocurrency

you know using something like bitcoin

rather than just say

a service like paypal or zelly or

something is because

you know if you use the hodl model which

is to hold on for dear life

means that you're holding on to

something because you think that value

is going to go up

sure and then you sell it later on and

you get more money than you actually

paid for it you know that's similar to

you know maybe the precious metal market

you know you buy gold hold on

for 20 years and it's going to go up

yeah and and of course

nobody's actually going out there and

hoarding cash

thinking that cash is going to go up in

value

they're going to always think a dollar

is a dollar a dollar is always worth a

dollar so i'm not going to run down to

the bank

and say i want 10 000

in one dollar bills so i can put those

in my house and one day those one dollar

bills are

somehow going to be worth more than a

dollar yeah

but we've been hoodwinked in a way um

you know in the united states we lost or

they removed rather the

um gold standard for the dollar almost

50 years ago it's 49 years ago

1971 they removed the gold 71. wow

it was that long ago okay and so

basically you know a dollar is worth

what you can exchange it from it doesn't

have a consistent value so say if you

have a bitcoin

but before now this dollar was worth

a dollars worth of gold well yeah i bet

roughly yeah but now it's getting too

deep but yeah yeah but now it's not

backed by anything so i mean you might

find out so that so that's where you get

that whole

full faith and credit of the u.s

government is what a dollar is

worth so i mean obviously that's why you

cut run into problems if you have

governments which print you know too

much currency

the the currency itself you know becomes

almost worthless and you get stuff like

hyperinflation and then it cost you ten

thousand dollars to buy a snickers bar

so a dollar what people can see for the

dollar is only what i can get in

exchange for that dollar

exactly that dollar itself has no value

past what i can purchase

sure so if you go back to the old barter

system right

and i'm uh let's use your example so i'm

a sheep farmer

and you're a cobbler so you've got the

boots and i've got the sheep and

and you need the wool for the sheep i

can say well my

sheep is worth maybe three boots

but now all of a sudden you're making

better boots now my sheep might only be

worth two boots right

yeah so so that barter system kind of

keeps

those values in check based off supply

and demand and now we're getting

way deep into you know economics and

everything so

so let's back yeah so before um we go

into our regular stump the shepherd

section which

you know you know sometimes are we

really doing that again

yeah here we go you know those ones we

have where it's like almost impossible

for you to be correct

this this one's like it's absolutely

possible for you to be correct can i

oh even guessing you're probably gonna

get the wrong answer even if there's

only two ounces

they're both wrong why do you do this to

me because it's fun

um so anyway just going back to bitcoin

a little bit because again that's the

one which

you know pretty much right anybody's

cryptocurrency that's what they've heard

um you know bitcoin was the first ever

cryptocurrency

sure right i mean there were other types

of digital

digital exchange but you wouldn't

specifically be able to call it a

cryptocurrency in terms of well kind of

like paypal was

right i mean there was kind of a way you

you could

move money around but he was still

based upon pay with like four pay pals i

mean it was

right it still held us dollars it was

just an online bank

one of the first online banks

and you know there were attempts at

creating digital currencies before

but they failed um certainly uh you know

governments tried to do it as a way of

you know and we're not saying that any

governments ever do anything nefarious

but it's a way of wanting to exchange

money between one country and another

and it being untraceable

right but again at that point when it

first started you know there were so

many vulnerabilities and like they

always say you know the best research

and products actually come out of

private

you know enterprises and companies and

then the government buys them out or

develops it from that point

sure um and you know cryptocurrency was

one of those so bitcoin was

you know one one of the um first

currencies to come into effect and the

only one which just kind of stayed

so the course so so who who came up with

this

bitcoin well you know there's a lot of

theories

um that the person who they credit with

it

was the name i can't remember his name

off the top of my head but um

it was a made-up name it's made up of

acronyms

is it stumped the wolf time but it

wasn't it was something like

toshi um and it was like

nagamoto

but when you break it down it's actually

made up of acronyms and it

they say that it was wasn't just one

person it was multiple people who

actually i'm sure it was

and did it and or are we sure

maybe maybe it was aliens yeah so it was

uh it was aliens wasn't it

i'd like to think so yeah i think it was

so you know bitcoin really

came into i guess notoriety on

the internet and various forums and

stuff in about

2010 okay you know people became aware

of cryptocurrency and stuff get

interested in you know the nerds

of which i was one um you know found the

whole

kind of thought of a you know new

currency you could use worldwide and it

was pretty much anonymous and all this

you know pretty interesting and it was

going to be one of those things well you

know imagine if this

you know becomes a you know currency

which overcomes

you know your regular currency like the

dollar and

so but you know it took a long time

before you know

enough people knew about it and before

actually got a decent value and

you know other altcoins appeared you

know such as litecoin

you know a lot of people have heard of

litecoin and that's the kind of silver

to bitcoin's gold i guess if you want to

compare it's always you know had a much

lower value

but um you know as we mentioned earlier

because it's decentralized

uh bitcoin reduces the possibility of

corruption

you know i i know that we say even with

something like paypal you know you can

find the username password to somebody's

paypal account

and spend their money yeah and of course

everybody

links their paypal account to their bank

account

so they can buy stuff through paypal and

have it drafted out of their account and

all that good stuff so yeah i mean if

you got a hold of somebody's username

and password

for paypal you could all of a sudden

send yourself a bunch of money out of

their bank account

yeah yeah and yeah well i mean it's just

the same thing as getting hold of

somebody's physical debit or credit card

as well as you know

you know the pin number or whatever but

as we were saying you know with regular

currencies you do have this situation

you know of quantitative easing where

banks simply just print

money you know when they're faced with

like economic problems

which are mostly caused by governments

making bad decisions you know

misspending money but bitcoin

and other cryptocurrencies because

there's a limit

on how many of those coins can ever be

in circulation

they're never gonna suffer from that

quantitative easing thing nobody's gonna

suddenly

put out there you know another 50

million bitcoin it can't be done there's

a

there's a limited amount and as i said

one bitcoin is made up of a million

satoshis but once all of those are mined

and they're in

circulation now the value of each one of

those little satoshi's can equate to a

different amount of regular currency

you know the dollars um

and it could get to i don't know some

theoretical point that one satoshi could

equal one dollar but you're never gonna

have

more bitcoins in circulation than there

are at the moment

so um having given that background to

bitcoin

you know the stump the shepherd thing is

mainly

based around bitcoin and this

as you and i have a little bit of

bitcoin and we've done a little bit of

research and maybe kind of been

interested in bitcoin for the last two

three

years and by the way full disclosure we

do

own a little bit of bitcoin yes yeah

we're definitely

not controlling 51 percent of the market

of bitcoin

but wouldn't that be nice because if we

were we wouldn't be doing this podcast

let's be honest

i probably wouldn't be out bed by now

actually yeah yeah so um

question number one what do you think

the first

purchase using bitcoin was for ah

a pizza it was a pizza it was a pizza

and i i remember this article and it was

a ridiculous amount of bitcoin that is

now worth

like millions of dollars well it was on

uh may 22nd

2010 and this guy bought two papa john's

pizzas

for 10 000 bitcoin oh my gosh and at

that time that 10 000 bitcoin came to

roughly about

41 okay so now hang on for

obviously we're still too lazy to video

these podcasts

so i know that a bitcoin today was

around

nineteen thousand dollars of bitcoin

this is around 190 million dollars

and this dude paid ten thousand

yeah for that so just add some zeros

but yeah okay so it's yeah it's 190 190

million 190 million dollars it comes

what kind of pizza did he get

i don't know but i was thinking for it

to be 41 like 10 years ago

and either the delivery driver wanted a

huge tip

or he must have got like about six

toppings on each of those people

41 i hope they didn't get the money i

hope they didn't get pineapple on that

pizza

that that would just make the story

disappointing but yeah so

so you bought two pizzas for what today

it would be 190 million dollars wow

and because you know in 2010 um

bitcoin was worth 0.0015

which is roughly a seventh of a cent

crazy

the seventh of a cent that guy that

guy's got to be hating live

you know it just imagine being that dude

right now

because obviously you didn't stump me on

that one but that's kind of a famous

story

yeah and he knows that story comes up

every time

bitcoin you know goes up goes down or

whatever

somebody's comparing the whole pizza

thing that guy

just has got to hate life yeah he has

got to hate life well i'd have hated

life even about i just spent 41 regular

dollars on two pizzas to be honest yeah

that's a good point maybe maybe he

wasn't renowned for making smart

decisions period

yeah fair enough right now i know i know

we touched on this earlier

but i want to ask you this question okay

just so it kind of gives them

you know listeners a bit more oh well by

the way but but

before we go any further for the record

i'm one for one right now yeah i'm never

trying to stump me it never happened

so right now i have a perfect score yeah

let's just make that clear yeah

okay so like i said i know we touched on

this i know but

it's bitcoin truly anonymous

no it's well it kind of is and it kind

of isn't remember i said that this is

one of those

it doesn't matter what you out so you're

still going to be wrong

unless you're using a few trade secrets

like washing your bitcoin there's this

process of passing it through multiple

wallets

and those wallet address you generate in

a new wallet address for the same

wallet that you can make it next to

untraceable so unless you're doing

something really bad

nobody and spending an awful lot of

money nobody's really going to take the

time

to actually find out where this money is

going where it came from everything else

so you can make it

as anonymous as it possibly can be you

look at the amount of time it took

you know the fbi to maybe catch you know

certain you know drug um

[Music]

websites you know on the dark web right

that

even with all that manpower and all that

money changing hands it still took a

long time before they

you know got to the user sorry the

actual person behind and i think it's

called the silk road

and the only reason they actually did

catch him was because he made a stupid

error

yeah you know it wasn't because if he'd

have kept true with what he was doing

they probably would not have been able

to track that's how

most criminals get caught though with

stupid errors yeah

and you know i mentioned earlier that

the bit bitcoin blockchain that ledger

is a permanent ledger and it is

transparent as long as you have

you know the wallet address but you know

with most

well and if not all you know digital

wallets now the address

changes after a specific point of time

and there's no way to relate without the

algorithm of your passcode

you can't connect one wallet to another

wallet sure

so you know if you made a transaction

next month and your wallet address has

changed there'd be no way despite the

fact this ledger is transparent

to connect your second wallet address to

your first wallet address now they can

see if multiple

addresses are making you know exchanges

with a singular wallet address but again

if that singular wallet destination

um or initiation is constantly changing

it gets to a point where it becomes

again almost impossible to you know

track those transactions makes sense so

um

i know actually this one you might know

the answer to

because i know we've had this discussion

before okay how many total

bitcoins are there 21 million there are

21. oh look at me go

look at me go it's finally something i

know a little bit about well we've had

like

literally maybe like 50 conversations on

this in the past

three years but yes you know uh and the

estimates are that the last one will be

mine

sometime around 21.40

at which point every bitcoin will be

every one of those 21 million bitcoins

will be in circulation

but as we mentioned uh because each of

those bitcoins consists of one million

satoshi's

that allows for 21

followed by 12 zeros or 12.1e13 whatever

the heck that means

so there's plenty to go around so i

think that roughly works out if there's

7.6 billion people on the earth at the

moment

they'd basically be able to own between

17 and 1800 satoshi's

each and if the price of bitcoin goes up

to the point where like i said one of

those satoshi's is worth a dollar each

or ten dollars each

you know everybody on the face of the

planet could earn a piece of bitcoin and

still have a significant amount of money

to use his transfer makes sense right

now this one i'm guaranteed you're not

going to get

ah i knew one of those were coming

because because i'm doing well

i'm doing i'm doing much better than i

typically do during these little

segments so

normally here's when you get zero yeah

well

yeah here's where it all falls apart

right so uh

as of april 2020 when you know they

probably stopped

counting after that because just before

the age of covenant for some reason

before that something came out

something came along which kind of uh

diverted people's attention but

how many different crypto currencies do

you think there are out there

yeah see uh that's why i hate you

uh i'm gonna guess

2000 no there are

there were as of april 2020

5392 different cryptocurrencies

now i remember that one i remember

looking maybe

18 months ago and i think

there was like 2200 2300 so over the

last kind of

year and a half i mean it's really

you know come through obviously they

doubled

there's a lot more yeah now to the end

of like last year

how many cryptocurrencies do you think

have failed and when i say fail i mean

the value has gone to essentially zero

and there's no chance of arresting

so so kind of like a penny stock that

just goes to

point zero zero zero one cents a share

which essentially means it's bankrupt

and goodness knows how many of those are

like we talked about earlier people

deliberately crashing it once right

cashed out though

yeah you know all right so the question

is how many of these

other altcoins have failed

now are we going off this 5000 number

of how many have failed four months four

months previous so let's say

roughly about 5 000 or so okay uh of

those 5 000 how many have failed

i'm gonna go with

4500 no it's actually only about

just over a thousand roughly about 20

percent

that's not bad would be considered as

failed because they have no value or

resurrected value and that doesn't mean

there might not be another 40 percent

who are close to it or just start

holding on

yeah bubbling under the surface but okay

but

but let's use your theory here right

let's use your rationale

80 of them still have value

yeah but such a minute value that even

if you held every single coin in

circulation you still might only have

three dollars and you've got nobody left

to

maybe other than one person in denmark

you know right

one of their slippers yeah but you know

what if you got two dollars in it

and you hold all the coins and it's

worth three bucks that's a 50

game i'm just saying i mean the math

works out well numbers don't lie

but then you but then we have to go back

to that what defines a currency and like

i said if the only person you can trade

it with is that old guy in denmark who

will sell you one of his used slippers

for that

cryptocurrency it's not really worth

yeah but maybe there's a big market in

denmark for you slippers

i don't know anyway that might that kind

of

you know thing might fall into the 40

percent of them see i'm trying to be

on dead i'm i'm trying to be glass half

full you're trying to be glass half

empty

no you're trying to sell somebody some

cryptocurrency you're trying to get rid

of no i just want some used shoes from

denmark

okay i'm sure that i'm sure you can do

that there's got to be like the

denmark ebay where you can buy a

refurbished slippers

yeah from like they bought them for some

grandparents for christmas and then they

died in like february so they're barely

used

i wonder if the people from holland ship

over their wooden shoes over there to

denmark

so you're saying like people in holland

will sell their clogs to people in

denmark yeah

why to try to

make this fake cryptocurrency have some

value

you do you do remember we made up this

scenario right oh

sorry it's not a real thing oh okay

unlike that you got me all excited i was

about to get on ebay right now and and

try to find a fake crypto currency

to buy denmark versions of wooden shoes

from holland

right now all right once again you know

that wasn't gonna happen unlike the

mining dwarves this

is not a real life scenario oh i forgot

about that already

so so why should people use something

like

bitcoin i mean we've explained what it

is how you get it

how it has value right but

why should people be using now this

isn't part of the shepherd i'm assuming

kind of moving on to explain most other

people's questions about

yeah why should i bother using it and

i'm sitting here trying to figure out

how i'm going to explain that

and knowing i'm going to get it wrong

based off your little notes that you're

holding so yeah okay good

good good for one thing you know people

don't like government having too much

power and when you use traditional

cashes fiat

um currencies you're giving away all of

the control to the central banks and the

government at any time can actually

freeze your bank account and deny you

access to your

funds you know any government can do

that you know they can abolish

coins and notes um you know let's use a

big country as an example i think it was

india back

2016 um they actually got rid of their

their currency just completely took it

out of circulation whereas with

cryptocurrencies

you and only you as long as you're not

giving away your

you know sure wallet address passcodes

um can access your funds

and so you know with that

cryptocurrencies abolish the

whole type of banks and middlemen taking

their cut

you know you don't need a bank account

you know you don't have credit checks

right and basically anybody with access

to the internet whether it be through a

computer or a phone

you know they can earn bitcoin buy

bitcoin and they can make

transactions so you know that electronic

wallet

you know that that's basically your bank

account and that belongs to you and you

only so i mean that people see

that you know it as a little bit of as a

safety net and with more and more places

now accepting bitcoin

more and more things you can buy you

know it

is becoming more and more of an accepted

kind of uh i guess idea that maybe this

might not be a bad current

currency to actually hold if i have to

invest in something

then how about i invest in something

which you know will have some value and

if everything went terrible with our

economy i still have something which is

worth

right something you know now um

i know we we spoke you know a while back

about

you know the number of increase in i

guess merchants which accept

you know bitcoin and some other coins

because i know there are some merchants

which accept

litecoin and ethereum but with bitcoin

you know some of the bigger names which

i really didn't know

you know they accepted bitcoin okay uh

microsoft have been accepted bitcoin

since 2014

so six years and i didn't know wow okay

so you can go on the microsoft store and

buy something with bitcoin so if you

wanted to

so if you wanted to really throw your

kids through a loop rather than buying

those v bucks they could use

real money to buy bitcoin and then use

that bitcoin to buy those

v bucks so then they'd have absolutely

no clue how much money they'd spend yeah

yeah so that really throws things over

yeah

yeah what about apple uh not not at this

point

no no because they're gay well because

they're gonna come up they're looking to

come up with their

just like um facebook they want to come

up with their own digital currency well

didn't facebook already

come up with those the library yeah the

planning was there but i don't think at

the moment there's too many exchanges

other than buying say features

on on facebook itself you know because

there's little micro transactions on

facebook

you can do and i think that's the only

thing you can do it but i think again

you have to buy it for real cash and i

don't know

again if the value of that currency

goes up or down i i'm not sure i haven't

looked

at it that much that makes sense but um

overstock.com i mean

you know they've been accepting

cryptocurrency for quite a while

starbucks have

i don't know when that started starbucks

wow yeah okay

it'd be a shame if you really didn't

have that much money and at one point

you were kind of like yeah i'm gonna go

buy myself like a tall coffee and then

you get there and like you only have

enough money to buy like a

cookie or something and no well that's

not a good example yeah

everything's more than coffee yeah

everything at starbucks is so expensive

i mean i

i can imagine them not looking at

what a bitcoin is actually worth and

you paid 19 000 for a cup of coffee yeah

well a lot of these transactions are

obviously online and not a point of sale

because it can take so long you know i

mean as you know when we

when you and i have sent bitcoin to each

other before and

with the um one we've most frequently

used there's three methods of transfer

there's like economy standard and like a

premium type one

right and the network fee and that is

the fee which goes with transaction just

like a credit card fee or whatever

changes depending on how fast you want

that money to get there

now if you use the economy one and it

can take between one and 24 hours for

that to get there that wouldn't be a

good thing to have a

point of sale saying a starbucks and you

know you pay them enough for a coffee

but bitcoin drops like three thousand

dollars overnight

and then by the time it goes into the

starbucks wallet you know it's only

worth three quarters of

you know a coffee so i mean most of

these transactions are online and once

you know it's been verified you know in

the blockchain that's

you know when that transaction occurs

and um you know i was thinking about

that because home depot actually accept

bitcoin so you can buy things on their

website i'm assuming with bitcoin

so again that would be a terrible you

know because the price of some of the

you know things in home depot don't have

a point of sale thing well

so i look at it kind of the the delay

that you're talking about i remember

when my mom

would take me to dillard's

you know department store years ago and

she had a charge card at dillard's and

they had this machine that she put her

card in they put a piece of paper on

there

they wrapped that machine down and

it was a carbon copy thing she signed

that carbon copy receipt

they didn't immediately transact

that right they had to submit that

little

form through their ancient computer

network

and it wasn't like it is today where you

go to the store and you swipe a card and

they immediately say yes they have

enough money in the bank or

no they don't it was an old school

method i mean you could

literally if you think about it you

could have probably went in there

and maxed out your account way above

what your credit limit was and

so now that we have this digital aspect

and the um the immediacy of trying to

figure out

where this is it's it's kind of like

that

so we we're gonna get there we're gonna

get there eventually

but it it's still in that infancy of the

old

carbon copy wrapping that thing down

you know rubbing the ballpoint pen

across it to

do the little carbon copy thing so you

have the

um the account numbers or whatever from

the card

we'll get there we'll get there yeah and

uh

what i mean i guess even in the days

when people used to write more checks i

mean you never knew

that the bank should take out some

stupid 1.99 charge for something and you

check

suddenly no good right um but and also

banks holding on to you know when you'd

pay with a credit card you know then

hold on to the fees before releasing

them for three days so i mean well they

still do that

yeah but you were dealing with actual

money again a fiat currency where it had

a standard value so yeah you could go

overdrawn you might you know buy

something max out your account and go

overdrawn but that

opportunity to do that doesn't exist

with cryptocurrency because you should

only spend what you have

and it's really on the other end of it

that merchant to make sure their system

in place

gets them the amount of money that the

product or service they're selling you

is worth so

it's a little bit different in respect

to that um yeah whole foods at

t paypal recently you know they're all

starting to accept bitcoin yeah

paypal made this big announcement that

now you can

go into paypal and you can buy into

bitcoin yeah

that's that's big you know because

paypal was one of those

first merchants that gave you

the ability to move money around the

internet and not

accept credit cards and you know if

you and i lived a world apart

i could send you money through paypal

via the internet

and so now paypal's jumped on it and

said

hey we'll go ahead and do bitcoin yeah

well i think essentially

you know the way they're operating is

just a kind of lower end exchange so

they can make a commission out of a

transaction sure

and and you know obviously with a

something the size of paypal they see

that

you know a certain number of people use

bitcoin through paypal

that you know there's enough money to be

skimmed at a low enough level

that you know they can make some money

off something which they're not really

having to control themselves so much

because you know they don't control

well it's it's all money-making

opportunity

and they see the ability to try to bring

cryptocurrency to the mainstream and say

hey if you don't know what

bitcoin is all about hey you can buy

some of it through our service you know

what paypal is all about

so why not buy a little bit of bitcoin

yeah robinhood is another one

that's a you know online brokerage where

you can buy stocks and

and do all that and they got into the

cryptocurrency and you can

buy that through them so yeah uh it it's

starting to get a little more mainstream

to let people

you know dip their pinky toe into the

pool and say

you know let me buy a little bit of this

and see what happens

yeah i mean it's obviously not for

everybody and like any other investment

you know even if you just buy regular

stocks and shares

you know you can't it's not smart to

wage you more than you can lose

more than you should afford to lose it's

vegas yeah it's vegas

right now and and that's unfair

a little bit but it's still vegas

because it's very volatile

and nobody knows exactly what's going to

happen so you got to speculate you got

to use your gambling money yeah

and you know you don't want to liquidate

your 401k

and say i'm going to put all this in

bitcoin right and hope for the best yeah

because tomorrow you could be broke yeah

but

tomorrow you could be a building exactly

like the guy who bought the pizzeria

could hold on for another

10 years there you go that's that

that's a perfect example i mean he

looked at that

as you know i'm taking this virtually

worthless cryptocurrency and i'm feeding

myself

i'm hungry but if he'd have held on to

it

he'd have been a billionaire right yeah

yeah

so you know i mean obviously these

digital currencies

are here to stay the

what we understand as cryptocurrencies

are probably not going to change

very much and how they're structured but

we are going to get kind of

bastardized forms of it like we said

with apple pay google pay

and you know whatever facebook are

operating but that's

still based upon the actual value of a

regular fiat currency to purchase

right essentially the same thing but you

just call it different names

because all google pay or apple pay is

it's just dollars but they just

call it a different you know it's just

another bank account like paypal

basically it's electronic exactly

so you know as we've said you know don't

rush out

and buy cryptocurrency um

we've been even though we've been i

won't say super knowledgeable on it

because we're absolutely not

um for maybe you know three years or so

or more even

you know we've never really put in

much money at all in fact i haven't put

any money in i got all my

cryptocurrency from doing surveys and

from mining right

you know so i didn't want to put any

money in whatsoever

i put a little bit of money in it but

it'd be the same as me

going up to a casino

and you know walking up to a roulette

table

and putting some money on black and

watching the

ball go around the wheel it's it's

gambling right now

but i think what we're gonna see

eventually

is it get much more mainstream

we we're getting closer

we're still a ways away but

it's gonna get very mainstream very

quickly

yeah so and with that

thanks for tuning in to this episode of

the wolf in the shepherd if you would

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